财政竞争、地方政府政策选择与经济增长——基于中国省际面板数据的实证研究

分税制背景下财政分权体制使得地方政府之间存在着激烈的财政竞争,其典型特征表现为税负、公共投入支出和公共服务支出三种政策工具之间的策略互动,从而影响各地区的经济增长。基于1997～2009年中国省级面板数据,通过估计交互项系数的符号,结果发现:地方政府的三种政策工具是相辅相成的;交互项的作用也存在着地区的差异;税负、公共服务支出和公共投入支出对经济增长有着不同的边际影响。     

财政分权、地方政府行为与经济绿色转型

依据2009—2019年省级面板数据,运用空间计量模型和中介效应模型,考量财政分权对经济绿色转型的影响。结果显示：财政分权促进本地经济绿色转型作用显著,但会阻碍相邻地区经济绿色转型进程。地方政府行为在二者之间发挥着中介作用,财政分权主要通过促进地方政府合理竞争、提高地方政府财政科技投入强度促进经济绿色转型,提高财政分权程度会强化地方保护主义行为,但地方保护主义行为对经济绿色转型的影响不显著。     

Fiscal Policy Shocks in the Euro Area and the US: An Empirical Assessment*

We analyse the impact of fiscal policy shocks in the euro area as a whole, using a newly‐available quarterly data set of fiscal variables for the period 1981–2007. To allow for comparability with previous results on euro‐area countries and the US, we use a standard structural vector autoregressive (VAR) framework, and study the impact of aggregated and disaggregated government spending and net‐tax shocks. In addition, to frame euro‐area results, we apply the same methodology for the same sample period to US data. We also explore the sensitivity of the results to the inclusion of variables aiming to control for underlying financial and fiscal conditions. The main new findings are that: expansionary fiscal shocks have a short‐term positive impact on GDP and private consumption, with government spending shocks entailing, in general, higher effects on economic activity than (net) tax reductions; output multipliers to government expenditure shocks are of similar size in the euro area and in the US; the persistence of a fiscal spending shock is higher in the US than in the euro area, which appears to be related to military spending in the US; and fiscal multipliers have increased over the recent past in both geographical areas.     

Signals from the government: Policy disagreement and the transmission of fiscal shocks

We investigate the effects of fiscal policy communication on the propagation of government spending shocks. To this aim, we propose a new index measuring the coordination effects of policy communication on private agents׳ expectations. This index is based on the disagreement amongst US professional forecasters about future government spending. The underlying intuition is that a clear fiscal policy communication can coalesce expectations, reducing disagreement. Results indicate that, in times of low disagreement, the output response to fiscal spending innovations is positive and large, mainly due to private investment response. Conversely, periods of elevated disagreement are characterised by muted output response.     

Fiscal decentralization,equalization, and intra-provincial inequality in China

Using a nationwide county-level panel dataset for the years 1995–2009, this paper conducts the first analysis in the literature to examine the impacts of fiscal decentralization and fiscal equalization, both measured at the sub-provincial level, on intra-provincial inequality in China. While fiscal decentralization offers significant advantages regarding public expenditure efficiency, a potentially large disadvantage is that it may lead to increased regional inequality. In this paper, in line with our theoretical hypotheses, we find that while fiscal decentralization at the sub-provincial level in China leads to larger intra-provincial inequality, fiscal equalization efforts performed by provincial governments tend to mitigate the detrimental effect of fiscal decentralization on intra-provincial inequality. Our results also indicate that the quantitative effects of fiscal decentralization on regional inequality tend to be larger when they are measured from the expenditure side, which is consistent with the fact that expenditure decentralization is a much more meaningful measure of decentralization in China. Overall, we provide evidence on the potential inequality costs of using fiscal decentralization as a development strategy. At the same time, we emphasize the importance of implementing a fiscal equalization program to ensure the overall success of decentralization policy.     

中国式财政分权影响资本配置效率研究

高度集中的政治管理体制下的财政分权使得中国财政分权对地方政府行为所产生的激励与西方国家不同。使用2002～2009年数据,对中国财政分权与资本配置效率进行理论研究与实证分析,结果表明:财政分权程度的提高对资本配置效率产生了阻碍作用,中国式分权所引致的地方政府规模扩张等行为扭曲是导致财政分权与资本配置效率负相关的主要原因。为此,应改革政绩考核指标、完善税收体系、调整财权分配制度。     

转型期中国土地出让收入和价格的演变规律——基于财政分权与经济目标的视角

针对当前突出的“土地财政”问题,利用1998~2012年省际面板数据,构建面板数据模型,实证分析转型期我国土地出让收入和价格是否由财政分权和经济目标考核的共同影响。结果表明,在财政分权下,地方政府通过出让更多的土地来获得收支平衡,导致出让收入增加和价格快速上涨;在经济目标考核下,地方政府会采取工业和商业混合发展模式,工业上采取协议方式低价出让土地与商业上采取“招拍挂”方式高价出让土地,两者之间差距逐渐扩大;房价和地区市场开放度也影响土地出让收入。     

Boom-Bust Phases in Asset Prices and Fiscal Policy Behavior

Boom and bust phases in asset prices have become a pervasive feature of macroeconomic developments in many advanced economies. This paper studies fiscal policy during boom-bust phases in asset prices and draws several conclusions. First, expansions and contractions in economic activity during such boom-bust phases tend to be highly persistent, cyclical turning points are harder to forecast, and the margins of error for output gap estimates can be large. Second, conventional estimates of revenue elasticities seem not to allow an accurate assessment of fiscal stance or the strength of underlying fiscal positions during boom-bust phases. Third, boom-bust phases tend to exacerbate already existing procyclical policy biases, as well as political-economy biases, toward higher spending and public-debt ratios.     

Challenges of Fiscal Policy in Emerging and Developing Economies

This article presents a systematic analysis of the availability and use of fiscal space in emerging and developing economies. We report two major results. First, emerging and developing economies built fiscal space in the run-up to the Great Recession of 2008–2009, which was then used for stimulus. Since then, fiscal space has shrunk and remains narrow as these economies have taken advantage of historically low interest rates. Second, fiscal policy in emerging and developing economies has become countercyclical (or less procyclical), i.e., “graduated,” since the 1980s, as most clearly demonstrated during the Great Recession. The move towards graduation is most pronounced for those economies with greater fiscal space, which suggests that fiscal space matters for a government’s ability to implement countercyclical fiscal policy.     

The Effectiveness of Fiscal Policy Over the Business Cycle: A CEE Perspective

In this article we analyze the effectiveness of fiscal policy—for a group of four Central and Eastern European countries. The recent literature shows that fiscal multipliers in the developed economies are higher during recession than expansion. So far, similar empirical analyses have been lacking for CEE countries. The results presented in this article show that fiscal multipliers in CEE countries differ with respect to the phase of the business cycle. Based on the SVAR methodology in which we allow for deterministic regime switching, we show that the government spending multipliers are significantly higher when the output gap is negative.     

财政分权如何加剧了养老保险基金失衡?——基于收支二维视角的分析

基金失衡是当前养老保险制度改革面临的困境。本文从财政分权角度构建基金失衡的解释框架,并对其影响效果与作用机制进行实证检验。结果发现,财政分权显著加剧了养老保险基金的失衡风险,在经内生性与稳健性处理后,这一结果依然成立,且财政分权的影响效应主要通过征缴效率和提前退休两个机制实现。具体而言,财政分权诱发地方政府放松缴费监管,导致养老保险缴费收入遭受损失;财政分权引起地方政府降低退休审核,以致职工提前退休现象较为普遍,进而加大了基金支付需求;制度环境对财政分权的两种作用路径具有门槛效应,在基金相对富余、对财政补贴依赖度低以及总体法定费率较高时,财政分权的作用机制更加突显。本文验证了宏观经济体制对养老保险基金运行的影响,深化了对分权体制与养老保险制度关系的理解。     

Spending Reversals and Fiscal Multipliers under an Interest Rate Peg

This paper examines whether fiscal stimuli are more effective when the monetary policy is less responsive to inflation. First, we provide empirical evidence suggesting that, in the period of U.S. passive monetary policy, a positive government spending shock was followed over time by a spending cut. Second, our theoretical analysis reveals that the pegged nominal interest rate is not a sufficient condition to generate a large fiscal multiplier. An increase in government spending could increase the long‐run real interest rate, if it is associated with a government spending reversal and a less responsive monetary policy. Consequently, the response of private consumption can be negative and the government spending multiplier is not necessarily greater than 1.     

Unemployment,Government Spending and the Laffer Effect*

The paper studies the effects of income tax rate changes in a general equilibrium model with frictional unemployment. Laffer curve effects, by which a tax rate reduction may increase the level of government spending or its share in output, are shown to be possible under certain conditions. These are the presence of unemployment benefit payments, government budget balance through fiscal spending adjustment and limited quantitative importance of labour reallocation costs. Endogenous government spending acts as a fiscal accelerator if the fiscal burden of unemployment benefit payments is large, but reduces the employment effects of tax rate cuts if it is low.     

分税与地方财政支出结构

本文研究了税收分成对地方财政支出结构的影响。理论分析发现,在地方政府的财政支出结构竞争中,税收分成比例的提高将直接导致地方政府增加生产性公共支出,发挥生产性支出的产出外部性,提高产出水平和自身税收收入水平,实现福利最大化。一系列经验分析显著地验证了上述结论,即当地级市政府的税收分成率提高10%,该地区生产性支出占比将提高1.39%。本文的分析和结论有助于解释中国地方财政支出结构变动的原因,从而为政府间税收分配改革提供有效的政策建议。     

The Government Spending Multiplier in Turkey

This study aims to measure the size of the government spending multiplier in Turkey for post-2001 financial crisis period within a structural VAR framework. The analysis demonstrates that a positive shock to government spending tends to increase output, tax, and real interest rate on impact and the size of the fiscal multiplier is relatively large at first few quarters. The fiscal multiplier reaches a peak value of 1.5 at second quarter and then starts to diminish. Furthermore, investigating the effects of the components of government spending reveals the fact that government investment expenditures, rather than consumption expenditures, have a profound impact on output at first few quarters.     

Macroeconomic Effects of Government Spending: The Great Recession was (Really) Different

We estimate the effect of government spending shocks on the U.S. economy with a time‐varying parameter vector autoregression. The recent Great Recession period appears to be characterized by uniquely large impulse responses of output to fiscal shocks. Moreover, the particularity of this period is underlined by highly unusual responses of several other variables. The pattern of fiscal shock responses neither completely fits the predictions of the New Keynesian model of an economy subject to the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates, nor does it suggest regular variation of fiscal policy effects depending on the state of the business cycle. Rather, the Great Recession period seems special in that government spending shocks had a strongly negative effect on the spread between corporate and government bond yields and a strongly positive effect on consumer confidence and private consumption spending.     

对中国财政分权度的研究

以财政分权理论述评为基础,文章构建了支出法财政分权度衡量指标,计算并分析了中国总体和分省财政分权度.研究发现:中国总体财政分权度已接近或达到最优水平;东、西、中部财政分权度依次递减;财政分权地区差异较大,西部地区财政分权不均衡现象尤为严重;各地区财政分权度缓慢收敛.文章较客观完整地反映了我国财政分权状况,指明了我国未来财政分权化改革的方向在于局部分权程度的调整而非整体分权程度的扩大.     

Government investment and fiscal stimulus

Effects of government investment are studied in an estimated neoclassical growth model. The analysis focuses on two dimensions that are critical for understanding government investment as a fiscal stimulus: implementation delays for building public capital and expected fiscal adjustments to deficit-financed spending. Implementation delays can produce small or even negative labor and output responses to increases in government investment in the short run. Anticipated fiscal adjustments matter both quantitatively and qualitatively for long-run growth effects. When public capital is insufficiently productive, distorting financing can make government investment contractionary at longer horizons.     

金融发展与经济增长——基于中部地区的实证分析

文章运用中部地区1995—2008年的省际面板数据,通过固定效应模型实证分析了金融发展与经济增长的影响。研究表明,财政分权改革后,中部地区的金融发展并没有成为经济增长的推动因素,主要可归结为地方政府干预、金融结构不合理和金融效率低下等原因。要大力发展区域中小型金融机构,加强金融生态环境建设。     

Fiscal Activism and the Zero Nominal Interest Rate Bound

In an economy where the zero lower bound on nominal interest rates is an occasionally binding constraint and the government lacks a commitment technology, it may be desirable for society to appoint a policymaker who cares less about government spending stabilization relative to inflation and output gap stabilization than the private sector does. A policymaker of this type uses government spending more elastically to stabilize the economy. At the zero lower bound, the anticipation of aggressive fiscal expansions in future liquidity trap situations increases inflation expectations and lowers real interest rates, thereby mitigating the decline in output and inflation.