生产性支出偏好与经济增长波动

文章基于我国1998-2006年的县级面板数据，分析财政支出结构对经济增长波动的影响机制。理论分析表明，我国地方政府偏好生产性支出的特点，将提高经济增长波动率；实证结果有力地论证了上述结论，即生产性公共支出占比提高10%，经济增长波动率将增加0.42%。稳健性分析发现中西部县级地区较东部地区经济增长的波动率更大。此外，我国生产性支出偏好对经济增长波动率的影响具有明显的顺周期特征，在繁荣时期，经济增长波动率的增加幅度将超过0.8%。文章的结论可为推进和完善中央与地方财政事权和支出责任划分提供参考和依据。

Productive Public Expenditure Preferences and Economic Fluctuations

In 1994, China's tax-sharing reform reconstructed the distribution of powers and financial power between the central government and local governments. As a result, the central government's financial resources rose, and local government powers continued to expand. Before and after the tax-sharing reform, the proportion of the central government's fiscal revenue to the national fiscal revenue was 20% in 1994 and rose to 45.5% in 2015. However,the proportion of local government fiscal expenditure to national fiscal expenditure was 69.7% in 1994 and rose to 85.1% in 2015. The rise of local government power is conducive to giving play to the information superiority of local governments, optimizing the structure of fiscal expenditures, maximizing the externalities of public expenditures, and promoting regional economic growth and social welfare. This paper intends to establish the mechanism of the local government's fiscal expenditure behavior and regional economic growth fluctuations, and provide policy recommendations for promoting the division of central and local financial affairs and expenditure responsibility.Relevant literature shows that the impact of government fiscal expenditure behavior on regional economic growth volatility is uncertain. Among them, there are many documents related to government expenditure and economic stability, but there are few documents focusing on the structure of fiscal expenditure. Based on the data of county level in China from 1998 to 2006, this paper analyzes the mechanism of financial expenditure structure on economic fluctuation. In the analysis of theoretical mechanism, it is considered that the characteristics of local government preference for productive public expenditure will increase the fluctuation rate of economic growth. The empirical results strongly demonstrate the above conclusions. That is, the proportion of productive public expenditure increased by 10%, economic growth volatility rate will increase 0.42%. The robustness analysis found that the county-level regions in the central and western regions of China have greater growth volatility than the eastern regions. In addition, the impact of China's productive public expenditure preferences on the volatility of economic growth also has obvious cyclical characteristics. In the boom period, the economic volatility will increase by more than 0.8%. The main contribution of this paper is based on the characteristics of China's local government's productive preferences, analyzing its impact on economic growth volatility, and supplementing the literature on the mechanism of fiscal expenditure structure and economic growth stability. Secondly, in the robustness analysis, the endogenous problem was better handled using the instrumental variable (IV) design, which is similar to the baseline conclusion. Third, the analysis of economic growth fluctuations and their periodic characteristics by county-level regional data expands the analysis sample. In addition, the use of county-level samples makes the conclusions more convincing and the empirical results are more stable. Fourth, in terms of policy, in 2016, the State Council proposed in promoting the division of central and local financial affairs and expenditure responsibilities, ensuring local implementation of financial affairs, stimulating local governments to take the initiative, and giving play to local government advantages and other policy contents. At last, The conclusion of this paper will provide reference and suggestion for advancing and perfecting the division of responsibility between central and local financial affairs and expenditure.