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。     

地区竞争、支出责任下移与地方政府债务扩张

地方政府债务过度扩张容易引发系统性经济风险。本文通过一个地方政府举债行为理论模型,分析了政府间共同事权的支出责任下移、竞争性地区的举债行为对地方政府债务规模的影响。在此基础上构建空间面板计量模型,利用279个地级市数据进行回归分析,结果表明:地方政府债务扩张是支出责任下移与标尺竞争机制共同驱动的结果;政府间支出责任下移造成的财政压力是地方政府被动负债的重要原因;地方政府间的标尺竞争使其在举债融资行为上表现为明显的策略模仿;各地区在债务扩张的主因上存在异质性,东部地区政府债务的增加主要是地区间竞争的结果。这意味着化解地方政府债务风险不仅应规范政府间财政支出责任划分,更重要的是完善地方政府的政绩考核体系和违规举债的问责机制。     

财政自主权、财政支出结构与全要素生产率--来自230个地级市的检验北大核心

本文尝试将财政自主权、财政支出结构与经济效率联系,在我国财政分权理论框架下揭示地方财政自主权与技术进步之间的关系。在理论上,提出了"地方财政自主权越高,技术进步水平也越高,但随着经济性财政支出边际效率递减以及社会性财政支出的长期不足,财政自主权对技术进步的影响正在减弱"的命题假说。在实证上,以1999-2013年230个城市数据,采用工具变量法检验了财政自主权对城市全要素生产率的影响。实证结果表明:(1)城市财政自主权对城市全要素生产率影响较弱,主要是对TFP组成中的规模效率(SE)和技术进步(TP)产生了较为明显的正影响;(2)财政自主权越高的城市,越倾向于增加经济性财政支出比重,而对于社会性支出则更有动机展开"逐底竞争";(3)财政自主权对全要素生产率构成中的规模效率(SE)和技术进步(TP)的影响呈现出减弱的趋势;(4)城市财政自主权的提高可以显著改进微观企业层面的全要素生产率水平。     

论我国地方财政运行中的道德风险问题

在我国财政分权改革中,地方政府逐渐成为相对独立的公共实体。由于我国现行体制下,上级政府对下级政府、中央政府对地方政府的隐性财政担保关系缺乏有效的风险约束机制,引致了地方财政运行中道德风险蔓延,提高了我国的财政风险。防范地方政府道德风险需构建风险约束机制,并在改革进程中进一步完善财政管理体制。     

Overlapping tax revenue,soft budget,and rent seeking

This paper investigates how the soft-budget constraint with grants from the central government to local governments tends to internalize the vertical externality of local public investment by stimulating local expenditure when both the central and local governments impose taxes on the same economic activities financed by public investment. The model incorporates the local governments’ rent-seeking activities in a multi-government setting. The soft-budget constraint is welfare deteriorating because it stimulates rent-seeking activities, although a soft-budget game may attain the first-best level of public investment.     

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。     

Intrametropolitan Decentralization: Is Government Structure Capitalized in Residential Property Values?

This paper examines the influence that the intrametropolitan growth in special districts has on residential property values. Our empirical approach tests whether the benefits of decentralizing local public good providers increases, decreases or leaves residential property appreciation rates unchanged. Past research in this area has been limited by the lack of variation in government structure within a region and by the self-selection of areas that decentralize governments. This research overcomes these limitations by 1) comparing appreciation rates for single-family homes that were located in areas that added local governments to appreciation rates for properties that were not; and 2) employing an estimation technique that border matches repeat sales to control for the self-selection of government structure. Overall, empirical results indicate that institutional decentralization has no influence on single-family property appreciation rates. It makes no difference whether the new government is the 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th new jurisdiction–the new government does not influence appreciation rates. Residential property values for homes located in jurisdictions that added security special districts experienced rates of appreciation that were lower than otherwise comparable properties. Recreation, fire, water, sewer and other special districts had no measurable influence on appreciation rates. Empirical results also indicate that more overlap among local governments reduces appreciation rates. New governments created in areas whose residents have greater income heterogeneity increase appreciation rates. The distance separating the new government from existing governments, the land area of the new government and the creation of multiple new governments have no influence on appreciation rates. Finally, these results depend on the border matching repeat sales estimation technique employed here.     

Professional Accounting Standards and the Public Sector—a Mismatch

Professional accounting standards have been applied to the public sector in Australia as part of the process of adopting accrual accounting. However, the reason given for their application to the public sector is questionable. The modes of operation of governments and of the business sector are very different, and accounting standards must be tailored to suit the specific information needs of each sector for the accounting systems to provide relevant information. The four Accounting Concepts Statements and the broad requirements of AAS 29 and AAS 31 are examined to show where changes are needed in the standards to make their information more relevant to the needs of the public sector. These changes would better enable accrual accounting information systems to assist in enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of public sector operations and the accountability of governments to parliament and citizens.     

Yardstick competition and the political costs of raising taxes: An empirical analysis of Spanish municipalities

We test the ‘yardstick competition’ hypothesis by examining the effects of property tax increases, both in a given municipality and in other neighbouring jurisdictions, on the incumbents’ vote. In order to obtain unbiased estimates of the effects of raising taxes on voting patterns, we take into account national political shocks, the ideological preferences of the citizenship and government traits, and apply Instrumental Variables. The vote equation is estimated using a large database containing nearly 3,000 Spanish municipalities, and we analyse three local election results (1995, 1999 and 2003). Our results suggest that property tax increases, both at the municipal and neighbourhood level, have a non-negligible impact on the incumbent’s share of the vote. JEL Classification H71 · H73     

我国现行环境税费的环保效果:基于地方政府视角的分析

财政联邦主义理论告诉我们,地方财政行为可能会影响环境政策的执行,在财政分权的情况下,可能出现地方政府为了促进经济增长和增加税收收入而采取放松环境质量管理的策略行为,导致"竞争到底"现象的出现。基于这一理论假设,从地方政府的角度,建立计量经济模型对我国现行环境税费的环保效果进行实证检验,得出如下结论:我国应积极推行绿色GDP等考核指标;明晰中央政府和地方政府各自的环保责任;中央政府应规范地方政府之间的竞争,等等。     

地方税收竞争中公共品供给的动态博弈及应对思路

地方税收竞争在中国具有普遍性,但与市场经济发达国家的税收竞争又存在着内容上的差异.从博弈分析来看,博弈参与主体在完全信息条件下,其最优结果是进行地方税收竞争且投入于公共品.但从中国的现实情况来看,公共品供给不足是源于制度上提供的潜在利益驱动地方政府偏离其应有责任.因此,减少政府层次、合理配给地方政府相对独立的税权、制定良好的公共支出政策是促使经济进入良性循环、地方税收竞争走向规范、有序的重要制度安排.     

Evaluating the Implementation of a Mandatory Dual Reporting System: The Case of Indonesian Local Government

Informative and transparent financial information in the public sector is crucial for improving public sector management and eradicating corruption. Given this, Indonesia has reformed its public sector accounting, reporting and accountability systems by implementing a dual reporting system known as ‘cash towards accrual’, following similar reforms in developed countries. Drawing on the experience of five local governments (districts) in Indonesia, this study finds that the implementation of the dual reporting system has helped local governments to produce transparent and informative reports. However, the accrual‐based contents of the dual reports produced by the new reporting system are underused for decision making. In addition, there has been a significant increase in costs associated with the implementation of the new accounting regime in the jurisdictions studied. The study also finds that the ability of the users to use information generated by the new accounting system is more important than just a legal and mandatory requirement to use the new system.     

On the effects of banks�� equity ownership on credit markets

Recent deregulation of the banking sector in the US and in Europe allows commercial banks to hold equity in non-financial firms. We develop a model to investigate the effects of bank equity stakes in firms on credit market competition. The main result is that an equity stake confers a competitive advantage to the holding bank, which in equilibrium results in decreased competition in credit markets and higher interest rates being charged to firms. However, regulatory limits on the size of a bank’s stake may, under certain conditions, be counterproductive: they could actually strengthen the equity-owning bank’s competitive advantage. Our findings shed new light on the role of equity in lending relationships, and highlight that, in addition to the well-known prudential aspects, there is an antitrust dimension in the separation of banking and commerce.     

Keeping secrets? Or what government performance auditors might not need to know

This paper examines the claims made in a recent paper in Critical Perspectives on Accounting by Vaughan Radcliffe about the way in which public sector auditors report their findings. Drawing upon the work of Taussig, he argues that while public sector auditors may know the truth, as may others, they choose not always to tell the truth in their reports and instead to treat what may be publicly unpalatable as a public secret. They modify their findings to ensure that these will be more acceptable to governments and, thereby, enhance their opportunity to influence government. These claims are shown in this paper to overstate the public sector auditor's response to difficult issues. Rather than keeping secrets, the contents of the auditor's reports may instead reflect the constitutional and institutional limitations in which they must work. Most importantly in most jurisdictions they are not to comment on matters of policy which are the domain of the government.     

Two Games of Interjurisdictional Competition When Local Governments Provide Industrial Public Goods

In this paper we investigate two different games of interjurisdictional competition when local governments provide public goods that benefit industry. Governments play a game either in tax rates on mobile industrial capital or in public expenditures. Although the literature suggests that competition in public expenditures is more competitive than in tax rates, this is not necessarily true in the case of industrial public goods. Moreover, in the presence of industrial public goods interjurisdictional competition may also lead to overprovision of public services.     

Schumpeterian competition and efficiency among commercial banks

In this paper, we aim to fill the gap in the banking literature by quantifying the impact that the Schumpeterian competition mode – i.e. competition through the launch of new products (or new varieties of products) – has on the cost and profit efficiency of a sample of commercial banks based in the United Kingdom. We estimate both a cost and an alternative profit frontier on an unbalanced panel of UK commercial banks over the period 2001–2012. The intensity of competition through product innovation is proxied by the trademark intensity (i.e. the ratio between the number of trademarks registered in a given year by all the commercial banks – net of the trademarks registered by the bank under observation – and the employment in the sector) in the commercial banking sector. Our results show that the (lagged) trademark intensity in the commercial banking sector does affect negatively the mean cost and profit efficiency in the sector but there is evidence that as trademark intensity increases in the sector, commercial banks react by improving their cost and profit efficiency.     

区块链技术在地方财政管理改革中的运用探究

区块链作为融合了分布式数据存储、点对点传输、共识机制、加密算法、智能合约等计算机技术的新兴应用模式,具有去中心化、数据不可篡改或重复、交易信息易于追踪和监督、交易流程公开透明等特征,为数字化时代下的财政管理改革和发展提供了新的思路和方向。本文在分析区块链技术特征的基础上,探究其在地方财政管理改革中的运用,为优化地方财政会计信息质量和预算编制流程、提高财政资金的使用效率、确保财政资金的合理合规使用和全流程可控、增加财政预决算信息公开透明度提出相关方案和建议。     

地方竞争是否阻碍了地方政府债务绩效的提升？——理论框架及空间计量研究

本文从举债行为策略视角考察地方竞争对地方政府债务绩效的影响。 首先,从不同地区间举债行为策略互动的视角对地方竞争如何影响地方政府债务绩效进行理论诠释,其次,在采用Global超效率DEA方法测度地方政府债务绩效的基础上,突破空间独立性假设,运用空间杜宾模型对地方竞争影响地方政府债务绩效的效果及空间外溢性进行实证检验。研究发现,在地方效用最大化目标导向下,无论是地方税收竞争还是公共投资竞争,都对债务增速产生了较为显著的正向影响和空间外溢效应,导致地方采取主动扩大债务规模的举债行为策略。与此同时,随着债务规模的持续增长,无论是地方税收竞争还是公共投资竞争,都将对债务绩效产生“规模报酬递减”的负向影响和空间外溢效应,尤其是公共投资竞争的影响效果更加明显。进一步地,如果考虑到可能存在预算软约束现象,地方竞争还将与预算软约束行为相结合,对债务绩效产生了“使用效率递减”的负向影响。本文结论为通过债务合理使用来促进经济高质量发展,防范化解地方政府债务风险提供了政策启示。     

省直管县改革与区域空气污染——来自卫星反演数据的实证证据

从政府治理结构改革的角度探讨如何推进环境污染治理是一种有益的尝试。从理论上来说,省直管县改革作为一种重要的政府治理结构改革,能够通过简化政府治理级次来改变政府治理效率,影响诸如环保等公共产品和服务的供给。本文采用卫星反演的PM2.5数据检验了省直管县改革前后县级区域空气污染的变动趋势。发现“财政省直管县”改革能显著降低地区空气污染水平,“强县扩权”改革则显著加剧了地区空气污染。稳健性检验、进一步的分析结果均支持上述结论。机制检验发现,“财政省直管县”主要体现为财力保障水平提升导致的治理变化,而“强县扩权”则主要体现为地方政府竞争行为改变导致的空气污染治理变化。总之,单纯的政府级次减少可能并不必然利于地方公共服务的提供,良好的财力保障为地方污染治理服务提供了支撑,竞争行为变化带来的改革效应则会受到政府对环境污染重视程度的显著影响。     

公共价值创造与政府会计改革研究

新公共管理理论自提出以来,对削减成本、提高效率等起到了重要的作用,但是难以反映政府提供公共服务的其他价值内涵。公共价值管理模式解决了新公共管理理论过于强调技术理性的缺陷,对政府活动、政策制定和服务提供产生重大的影响,政府会计作为信息收集、价值判断和管理矫正的重要工具,其改革应以公共价值为导向,充分发挥其在公共价值创造中的重要作用。