财政压力与地方政府行为——基于教育事权改革的准自然实验

大规模减税降费时期,各界对财政可持续性问题尤为关注。在这种"紧日子"的财政压力环境下,地方政府会表现出怎样的行为倾向,目前的证据还相对匮乏且不系统。本文以2010年教育事权改革为准自然实验,研究了伴随事权改革而形成的财政压力对地方收支行为的影响。实证结果表明,为了实现中央政府提出的"2012年国家性财政教育经费占GDP比重4%"的目标,地方政府的教育支出规模经历了快速扩张。在应对急剧支出需求所带来的财政压力时,地方政府没有扩大税基或强化征管,而是以牺牲其他支出的增长为代价,且在目标实现后,这类支出未得到弥补或改善。本文的研究对中国财政体制改革和现阶段减税降费具有重要启示:一方面,在财政支出偏好和基本格局未得到根本改变的情况下,应防范民生性公共服务为财政压力买单;另一方面,在关系到各级政府切身利益的财政体制或税费制度改革时,应予以适当的转移支付支持,避免改革对中国公共服务区域不均等程度的加剧。

Fiscal Pressure and Local Governments'Behavior Based on the Quasi-Natural Experiment of Educational Authority Reform

In the current period of massive tax and fee reduction,the issue of financial sustainability has caught much attention from across the society.Under the financial pressure to“tighten the belt”,the current evidence is relatively scarce and unsystematic to reveal behavior tendencies of local governments.Based on the quasi-natural experiment of educational authority reform in 2010,this paper studies the impact of financial pressure on local revenue and expenditure behavior.The empirical results show that in order to achieve the target of“increasing the government expenditure on education to 4%of GDP by 2012”put forward by the central government,local governments rushed to expand education expenditure.To meet the growing expenditure demand,the local government did not expand the tax base or strengthen tax collection and management measures,but sacrificed the increase of expenditure on other items,and after the goal was achieved,no compensation or improvement was made to the sacrificed items.This paper has important implications for China's fiscal reform and ongoing tax and fee reduction:first,without fundamental changes to the preference and basic pattern of fiscal expenditure,we should guard against the risk of sacrificing public services vital to people's life for the financial pressure caused by the reform;second,when reforming the fiscal system or tax and fee system that concerns the vital interests of local governments,appropriate transfer payment support should be given to avoid the worsening of regional inequality of public services in China.