中国式分权下的区域创新绩效研究---基于资源获取与资源配置视角的分析

依据资源基础理论,财政自主权作为一种有价值、稀缺、不可完全模仿、组织可利用的财政资源,是地方政府取得良好区域创新绩效的来源;使用2007—2016年中国分省(自治区、直辖市)的面板数据,实证检验了财政分权对区域创新绩效的影响。研究发现:①财政分权对区域创新绩效具有显著的正向影响,在考虑财政分权异质性、创新绩效异质性、创新强度、内生性等问题后,结果依然稳健;②地方政府在运用支出自主权为获取良好的区域创新绩效时,存在"软约束"问题,即收入分权对支出分权与区域创新绩效之间的关系具有约束作用但不显著,可能的原因在于转移支付的"公共池"效应与创新锁定效应。     

The effect of fiscal performance on local government election results in Israel: 1989–1998

We discuss the circumstances under which voters in local elections will reward fiscal responsibility and suggest that such circumstances evolved in Israel in the mid-1990s. We present empirical evidence that, indeed, fiscal performance of mayors substantially affected their reelection probability in the 1998 campaign but not in the 1989 and 1993 campaigns. Changes in the political environment, enforcement of audit and financial reporting requirements, tougher imposition of hard budget constraints and the development of local media are proposed as explanations. The hypotheses that the fiscal variables reflect the income level at the locality, or the mayor’s success in extracting resources from the central government are tested and rejected.     

地方政府环境支出行为的空间策略互动研究*——传导机制与再检验

本文从理论和实证两个维度检验了地方政府环境支出行为的空间策略互动的传导机制。结果表明，环境支出存在明显的空间策略互动与时间滞后效应。其表现为相邻省级地区之间环保财政支出行为的互相模仿和路径依赖。外商直接投资和财政分权并不是导致地区间环境支出“逐底竞争”的直接原因。在构建多维度政绩考核体系来引导政府财政支出竞争的同时，建立地区间环境支出的协调机制和对外开放等途径，有利于实现均衡和绿色发展。     

Decentralization and local pollution activities: New quasi evidence from China

Traditional fiscal federalism theory holds that decentralization may improve the provision of public goods and services. However, the social welfare field with strong externalities may face different incentives and behavioural logics. This paper provides novel empirical evidence for the causal relationship between decentralization and local pollution. In this paper, we focussed on China's widely spread decentralization reform, which substantially expanded the economic and social management autonomy of county governments. Using the difference-in-differences method and a panel dataset from 1998 to 2007, we found that the reform would compel affected counties to loosen environmental regulation, adopt financial and fiscal policies that would actually support heavy-pollution industries' rapid economic growth. Overall, the reform led to a significant increase in local pollution, thus worsening the overall environmental quality. Moreover, cost-benefit analysis indicated that the reforms generated net gains in social welfare, but the substantial environmental costs cannot be ignored.     

Political decentralization and corruption: Exploring the conditional role of parties

This study investigates how national levels of corruption are influenced by the interaction of two factors in political decentralization: the presence of local elections and the organizational structure of national parties. Previous studies have focused primarily on the role of fiscal decentralization on corruption and have mostly ignored the institutions of political decentralization. Using new data in a series of expansive models across multiple countries and years, we find that corruption will be lower when local governments are more accountable to and more transparent toward their constituents. This beneficial arrangement is most likely to occur when local elections are combined with nonintegrated political parties, meaning that party institutions themselves are decentralized from national control. Such an institutional arrangement maximizes local accountability by putting the decision to nominate and elect local leaders in the hands of those best in a position to evaluate their honesty—local electors.     

Patronage and ideology in electoral behavior: Evidence from Egypt's first presidential elections

This paper investigates the impact of patronage and ideology on voter behavior and election outcomes. Egypt's first free presidential elections represent a good case study to answer the question whether private gain outweighs ideology in voter behavior on a broader level. First, we combine election results with household surveys and national statistics to estimate the impact of patronage (measured by public employment) on voting for the pre-revolution regime candidate. Second, using results of the first round of elections as a proxy for ideology, we test for the effect of ideological preferences on voting behavior. Additionally, we test for candidates' ability to mobilize supporters. Our results suggest that patronage has a stronger effect than secularist ideology but a weaker effect than pro-change ideology. Results show that the number of public sector and government employees in each electoral district has a positive impact on participation rates.     

Earmarked taxation and political competition

Although tax earmarking constitutes a voluntary constraint for government's policymaking, it is widely used in the real world. This paper investigates the electoral dimension of earmarking in a model of political competition with ideological parties. Its main contribution is to derive new insights on the relationship between earmarking and parties' probability of winning the elections. We find that the electoral pressure may favor the existence of tax-earmarking equilibria, but that it sometimes creates a tendency against earmarked taxation even when, as shown by Brett and Keen (2000) [Brett, C., Keen, M., 2000. Political uncertainty and the earmarking of environmental taxes. Journal of Public Econonomics 75, 315–340], incumbent governments have strong incentives to use earmarking rules to constrain future policymakers.     

China's Fiscal Decentralization and Regional Economic Growth

The present paper applies Lucas's theory of endogenous growth and Stiglitz's theory of local public goods to build an econometric model consisting of five simultaneous equations to study China's fiscal decentralization effects on regional economic growth. The model is estimated by two‐stage least squares using a set of panel data on 31 Chinese provinces during 1996–2005. The estimated results show that China's fiscal decentralization increased the local governments' expenditure on physical infrastructure and education, which led to the rising local physical capital stock and human capital levels, respectively, and then resulted in the growth of regional economies.     

Familiarity breeds growth: The impact of factional ties on local cadres’ economic performance in China

Some attribute China's rapid economic growth to a cadre promotion system that rewards economic performance. Others argue that political promotion in China hinges on factionalism. Extant empirical studies often assume that performance can be measured independently from the effect of factionalism. We test the validity of this assumption by examining whether local cadres’ economic performance would change as a result of losing vertical ties to a higher authority. We find an immediate increase in the growth rates of local GDP and government revenue. However, the performance change is mediated by the type of succeeding leaders, as it occurs only under locally promoted leaders who have existing ties with the local cadres. We further examine various channels through which a leader's insider status may affect local economic performance and find that newly appointed outsider leaders would cut fiscal transfers to the local level, which may explain the drop in their short‐term performance.     

Decentralization and political institutions

Does fiscal decentralization lead to more efficient governance, better public goods, and higher economic growth? This paper tests Riker's [Riker, W. (1964) “Federalism: Origins, Operation, Significance,” Little, Brown and Co, Boston, MA.] theory that the results of fiscal decentralization depend on the level of countries' political centralization. We analyze cross-section and panel data from up to 75 developing and transition countries for 25 years. Two of Riker's predictions about the role of political institutions in disciplining fiscally-autonomous local politicians are confirmed by the data. 1) Strength of national political parties significantly improves outcomes of fiscal decentralization such as economic growth, quality of government, and public goods provision. 2) In contrast, administrative subordination (i.e., appointing local politicians rather than electing them) does not improve the results of fiscal decentralization.     

绿色技术创新能否有效改善环境质量？—基于财政分权的视角

“双碳”背景下，如何通过绿色技术创新改善环境质量？政府在生产生活方式绿色转型过程中起到了什么作用？本文以2004-2018年263个地级以上城市数据为样本，采用不同维度指标衡量环境质量，并采用面板数据模型，研究绿色技术创新对环境质量的作用机制，以及财政分权在绿色技术创新与环境质量之间所起的调节作用。结果表明：绿色技术创新水平越高，越有利于改善环境质量，但绿色技术创新对环境质量的改善作用随着财政分权水平的提高而降低；在财政分权的作用下，绿色技术创新改善环境质量的影响机制存在区域异质性、时间差异性以及门槛效应。因此，需要因地制宜把控财政分权水平，加大城市绿色技术创新投入，提高绿色技术的使用率，加快城市绿色低碳发展的目标实现。     

The Effects of Fiscal Consolidation and Welfare Composition of Spending on Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from US Gubernatorial Elections between 1978 and 2006

This study attempts to make a contribution to the field of spending aspects of fiscal policy and their impacts on electoral outcome. Due to varying degrees of financial responsibilities and commitments to provide public goods and services, US state governments serve as a perfectly natural laboratory to test the electoral significance of fiscal policies. We adopt a probit model, with several specifications, to determine significant impacts of fiscal consolidation and increases in welfare spending on US gubernatorial elections from 1978 to 2006. The analyses show that voters are more concerned about the increase in debt than current budget deficits. An increase in welfare spending is negatively associated with reelection. Moreover, the impact of taxation on gubernatorial elections turns out to be insignificant. In particular, findings suggest that the political business cycle model does not hold true in US gubernatorial elections. Expansionary fiscal policy right before the election may not have crucial impacts on the chances of an incumbent winning the election.     

The electoral migration cycle

This paper proposes a new test of Tiebout sorting that relies on the exogenous time structure of recurrent local elections. The test is based on the idea that competitive elections represent periodic perturbations to the Tiebout equilibrium of local public good provision and allocation of households to communities, so that their schedule should affect the timing of households' sorting decisions. On the other hand, internal migration flows that have nothing to do with the demand for public goods over which localities vote recurrently ought to be orthogonal to the timing of elections in a reduced-form migration equation. I exploit the staggered schedule of mayoral elections in Italy to analyze migration, elections, and public budget data across several thousands of municipalities, and find evidence of a systematic influence of the electoral calendar on the timing of sorting decisions.     

Political budget cycles: Do they differ across countries and why?

This paper uses a large panel data set to examine the relation between elections and fiscal policy. We find evidence of political budget cycles: on average, government fiscal deficit increases by almost 1% of GDP in election years. Moreover, these political budget cycles are significantly larger, and statistically more robust, in developing than in developed countries. We propose a moral hazard model of electoral competition to explain this difference. In the model, the size of the electoral budget cycles depends on politicians' rents of remaining in power and the share of informed voters in the electorate. Using suitable proxies, we show that these institutional features explain a large part of the difference in electoral budget cycles between developed and developing countries.     

财政透明度对企业产能过剩的影响研究——基于"主观"与"被动"投资偏误的视角

文章把地方政府的财政透明度纳入企业微观行为的分析体系,根据《2012年中国市级政府财政透明度研究报告》和《2012年世界银行中国企业调查数据》等统计资料,实证检验了财政透明度对企业产能过剩的两种影响机制——企业"主观"投资偏误形成机理和"被动"投资偏误形成机理.研究发现:(1)财政透明度的提高会增加企业对政府行为的理性预期,减少其对外部经营环境的不确定性判断,抑制了企业由于"主观"投资偏误而导致的产能利用率低下、产能过剩现象;(2)财政透明度的提高增加了政府干预土地要素市场的成本,继而减少了企业因政府干预土地要素市场而产生的"被动"投资偏误,产能利用率提高.     

Compensation for environmental services and intergovernmental fiscal transfers: The case of India

This paper studies mechanisms to compensate local government for the public provision of environmental services using the theory of optimal fiscal transfers in India. Especially, we analyzed the role of intergovernmental fiscal transfers in achieving the environmental goal. Simply assigning the functions at appropriate levels does not ensure optimal provision of environmental services. Optimality in resource allocation could be achieved by combining the assignment system with an appropriate compensation mechanism. Intergovernmental fiscal transfers would be a suitable mechanism for compensating the local governments and help in internalizing the spillover effects of providing environmental public goods. Illustrations are also provided for India.     

Compensation for environmental services and intergovernmental fiscal transfers: The case of India

This paper studies mechanisms to compensate local government for the public provision of environmental services using the theory of optimal fiscal transfers in India. Especially, we analyzed the role of intergovernmental fiscal transfers in achieving the environmental goal. Simply assigning the functions at appropriate levels does not ensure optimal provision of environmental services. Optimality in resource allocation could be achieved by combining the assignment system with an appropriate compensation mechanism. Intergovernmental fiscal transfers would be a suitable mechanism for compensating the local governments and help in internalizing the spillover effects of providing environmental public goods. Illustrations are also provided for India.     

Fiscal regime shifts in Portugal

We estimate changes in fiscal policy regimes in Portugal with a Markov Switching regression of fiscal policy rules for the period 1978–2007, using a new dataset of fiscal quarterly series. We find evidence of a deficit bias, while repeated reversals of taxes making the budget procyclical. Economic booms have typically been used to relax tax pressure, especially during elections. One-off measures have been preferred over structural ones to contain the deficit during economic crises. The EU fiscal framework prompted temporary consolidation, but did not permanently change the budgeting process.     

Does fiscal decentralization affect local governments' strategic behaviours? Evidence from South Korea

Local governments tend to show strategic behaviours when making their spending decisions. However, few studies have examined strategic behaviours when promoting fiscal decentralization. Thus, this study empirically examines the presence of strategic interactions in expenditure decisions in South Korea as well as how fiscal decentralization affects those interactions, using a panel data set from 2010 to 2017. The results demonstrate that a local government mimics other governments' spending when those governments' residents share similar age demographics. Moreover, local governments in South Korea engage in strategic interactions as their expenditure side becomes more decentralized. However, local governments tend to demonstrate less isomorphic behaviour in welfare spending decisions when they have higher revenue decentralization. This is because local governments have no motive to emulate other welfare policies, as the central government delegates the provision of social services to local governments by providing grants with strings attached.     

地方政府竞争的约束与激励:一个拓展研究

现有的文献并没有严格区分地方政府竞争的约束条件和激励要素,而是笼统地表述为"影响因素",而且往往过于注重经济因素的影响,并把"财政分权导致地方政府竞争"看作是一个公理性的结论。这对于明晰地方政府竞争的内在机理以及规范研究极为不利。约束条件包括宪法秩序的变化、意识形态的松动、分权化改革以及要素、产品甚至企业的跨区域流动性;激励要素包括地区经济的发展、权力中心的认可、辖区居民的支持以及自身利益的强化。