转移支付与地方政府支出规模膨胀——基于中国预算制度的一个实证解释

自2000年以来,为了缩小地区间差距和促进基本公共服务均等化,我国的财政转移支付规模迅速扩大。本文利用1994-2015年省级年度数据发现,地方政府获得的一般性转移支付和专项转移支付每增加1元,年度一般预算财政支出将分别增加1.61元和2.12元,远远超过本地财政收入增加所产生的影响。这也意味着财政转移支付在我国产生了较大的“粘蝇纸效应”。在2010年提前下达固定数额转移支付指标改革后,一般性转移支付的“粘蝇纸效应”有所下降。使用分月数据的回归结果显示,“年底突击花钱”对专项转移支付“粘蝇纸效应”的贡献最大。本文的研究表明,转移支付引发的地方财政收入的不确定性、转移支付下拨时滞以及刚性的年度预算平衡制度是导致我国地方政府支出规模膨胀的重要原因。本文的研究结论意味着,中央应进一步规范转移支付制度、扩大提前下达转移支付指标的范围、加快转移支付的拨付进度、建立和完善跨年度预算平衡机制、积极防范转移支付的道德风险问题。地方各级政府应该加强预算执行管理,强化预算约束力。

Intergovernmental Transfers and the Expansion of Subnational Government Expenditure: An Empirical Explanation based on China's Budgetary System

Since the Tax-sharing Reform of 1994, fiscal relations between China's central and local governments have shown the characteristics of “centralization of fiscal revenue and decentralization of fiscal expenditure and responsibilities.” Accordingly, the central government provides a large number of intergovernmental transfer payments to cope with the mismatch between financial resources and responsibilities. Studies have shown that intergovernmental transfer payments can reduce the financial gap and income inequality between regions (Yin and Zhu, 2009; Mao et al., 2011; Su and Xie, 2015; An and Wu, 2016), promote the equalization of basic public services (Guo and Jia, 2008; Fan and Zhang, 2013), increase the economic growth rate (Guo et al., 2009; Ma et al., 2016), and improve the quality of the ecological environment (Fu and Miao, 2015). At the same time, intergovernmental transfer payments also bring negative effects such as the flypaper effect. The flypaper effect refers to the phenomenon whereby intergovernmental transfer payments lead to greater fiscal expenditure by local governments than if the equivalent fiscal revenue was raised by local governments themselves (Gramlich, 1969; Inman, 2008; Dahlberg et al., 2008; Lundqvist, 2015; Gennari and Messina, 2014; Leduc and Wilson, 2017). The flypaper effect indicates that although intergovernmental transfer payments only redistribute financial resources across different regions, they affect the scale of fiscal expenditure by changing the revenue structure of local governments.
As shown by many empirical studies, the size of the flypaper effect varies between countries. The estimated size of the flypaper effect is 0.25–1.06 in the U.S. (Hines and Thaler, 1995; Brennan and Pincus, 1996; Knight, 2002; Gordon, 2004; Lutz, 2010; Leduc and Wilson, 2017) and about 1 in Europe (Dahlberg et al., 2008; Lundqvist, 2015; Gennari and Messina, 2014). Astonishingly, based on a limited number of studies, the estimated size of the flypaper effect in China is considerably larger than in Western countries. For example, Liu and Ma et al.(2015) find that a 1-percent increase in general and special transfer payments leads to a 1.5 and 3-percent increase, respectively, in the county government's fiscal expenditure. The county-level estimation in Mao et al. (2015) shows that the flypaper effect of general transfers is as high as 2.2–2.5. As a result, it is necessary to explain China's high flypaper effect in light of China's particular budgetary and intergovernmental transfer systems.
Using China's province-level panel data from 1994 to 2015, we find that a 1 RMB increase in general and special transfer payments is associated with a 1.61 and 2.12 RMB increase, respectively, in fiscal expenditure, revealing a large flypaper effect. We also find that the flypaper effect of general transfer payments reduced after 2010 when the central government began to release the transfer payment quota to subnational governments in advance. Further investigation using monthly data indicates that special transfer payments augment the flypaper effect through a well-known mechanism: the year-end crash expenditure. Our findings add to the impression that the uncertainty of merited transfer payments to subnational governments, delays in the distribution and appropriation process of transfer payments, and the rigidity of China's budgetary system jointly contribute to the larger flypaper effect in China.
This paper adds to the literature in the following ways. First, based on the interaction between China's special fiscal budget management system and the intergovernmental transfer payment system, this paper explains why China's flypaper effect as found in the empirical literature is so large. This paper is also the first to use provincial fiscal data to calculate the monthly contribution to the annual flypaper effect. This decomposition helps us to observe details concealed by the annual data. Our study indicates that the central government should regulate the intergovernmental transfer payment system, expand the scope of intergovernmental transfer targets, expedite the progress of funding, build a cross-annual budget balance mechanism, and prevent the moral hazard problem of intergovernmental transfer payments. Subnational governments should in turn improve their implementation of budget management and strengthen their adherence to governmental budgets.