【作者】 闫威；

【导师】 夏振坤；

【作者基本信息】 华中科技大学 ， 西方经济学， 2004， 博士

【摘要】 随着财政学向公共经济学的发展,作为公共支出理论主体的公共品理论日益受到理论界的重视。同时,由于政府职能的转变,政府作为一方经济主体正逐渐从一般竞争领域退出,重点转向为全社会提供高质量的公共产品与服务。并且由于以财权和事权下放为标志的分权化改革的逐渐深入,这些公共产品与服务大多是由地方政府供给的。因此,在此种宏观背景下研究地方公共品供给相关问题,就显得尤为迫切和必要。 传统的公共品理论研究重在提出实现公共品有效供给的帕累托条件,如萨缪尔森规则及其扩展形式。但对地方公共品来说,由于其本身具有的地域性、地方政府的多样性以及各种要素在地区间的流动性,仅仅从规范研究的角度进行分析,就显得过于单薄了。近现代的理论发展表明,对地方公共品的理论研究,大多是围绕各种不同假设下地方公共品是否供给不足这个实证问题展开的。本文在理论上的贡献,也是创新点之一,就在于从总体上对现有研究进行综合把握,发展出一个包含流动性、税收竞争等因素的新古典一般均衡模型,不仅从理论上说明地方公共品供给不足的问题,而且通过修正流动性等有关前提假设,阐明要素流动性和政府间竞争对于克服地方公共品供给不足问题的重要意义。 本文对中国地方公共品供给现状的考察表明,中国地方政府在提供地方公共品时具有系统的选择性偏差,即对某些地方公共品供给过度,而对另一些地方公共品则供给不足。这种并非总量不足、而是结构失衡的特殊现象,通过新古典模型方法是很难作出解释的。因此,作为本文主要创新点,我们将地方公共品分为易于传递政绩信息的显性地方公共品(如开发区、城市广场等)与周期长、收效慢、“百年树人”型的隐性地方公共品(如教育、医疗等),并摒弃了新古典模型中关于“善良”政府的假设,转而在中国特殊国情背景下重新考察地方政府官员的行为目标与约束机制。主要观点为:以中央和上级为中心的目标函数以及以政绩为主要标准的干部考核机制,促使地方政府(官员)更加偏好于供给显性地方公共品,从而出现地方公共品供给中的选择性偏差。 一个很明显的逻辑问题是,对显性地方公共品的供给是需要花费巨额成本的,就算是各地方政府都有激励大量供给显性公共品(如“大干”、“快上”各种政绩工程),但受到自身财力与预算的约束,这种现象理应不是一种全国性的普遍现象, I<WP=4>否则有些较穷地区的地方财政岂非早就破产了?本文另一创新点就在于提出了地方政府的成本软约束概念,指出选择性偏差所造成的福利损失根本不是由地方政府(官员)本身负担的,它被居于强势地位的地方政府以各种形式和手段(如乱摊派、乱集资等)转嫁给了地区公众。从这一点出发,我们就不难理解,在中国有时候反而是越穷的地方越喜欢做“表面文章”了。与此相对应,我们通过运用信息经济学中的信号传递模型,用形式化的语言阐明,在各地方政府竞相供给显性地方公共品、并以此向中央政府传递政绩信息的过程中,一般理论所预测的分离均衡并不存在,各地方政府实际上都陷入一种“囚徒困境”式的混同均衡。本文进一步指出,造成地方政府成本软约束的根本原因在于地方公众对地方政府压力机制的缺乏,这归根结底是民主制度特别是基层民主制度的问题。更多还原

【Abstract】 The theory of public goods has been increasingly emphasized during the transitionfrom traditional finance towards public economics. With the transformation ofgovernment functions, the governments retreat gradually from generally competitiveareas and focus on the provision of public goods and services. Actually, most of thosepublic goods and services are provided by local governments due to the decentralizationreform which could be characterized by the assignment of fiscal power and acting dutyto lower tier governments. Under such a background it is very urgent and imperative tostudy the issues concerning the provision of local public goods. Traditional theory of public goods elaborates primarily on the Pareto condition ofthe efficient provision of public goods, which is known as the Samuelson’s Rule and itsextensive forms. As for the local public goods, it is not enough to analyze the problemjust from a perspective of normal research because of its local scope, diversity of localgovernments and the mobility of factors among regions. Modern theory developmentshave shown that most researches concentrate on the question whether the local publicgoods will be underprovided under some certain hypotheses. As a theoreticalcontribution and also as one of the innovations, this thesis is intended to synthesizecurrent studies into a neoclassical general-equilibrium model with mobility and taxcompetition being taken into account. The thesis not only gives a theoretical explanationto the underprovision of local public goods, but also proves that complete mobility ofhouseholds is vital to the solution to such a problem. After an investigation of current situationabout the provision of local public goodsin China, it is found there exists a selective distortion in local governments’behavior inthis aspect. That’s to say, some local public goods are oversupplied while others areundersupplied. However, it is hard to explain such a phenomenon following the aboveneoclassical general-equilibrium model. As the main innovation, in this thesis weclassify the local public goods into two kinds—the distinct kind and the indistinct kind,and abandon the unpractical hypothesis of “benevolent government”. In brief, thedistinct local public goods refer to developing zones, city plazas, high buildings and III<WP=6>large mansions, etc., which are the embodiment of government’s achievements. Theindistinct local public goods mainly are education, medical care, and so on, whoseeffects are hard to observe and evaluate. It is obvious to see that the information transfercost for the former kind is much lower than the latter kind. After a re-examination of theobjectives and restriction mechanism of local government officials, the thesis proposesthat it is the central - government - oriented objective function and physical –achievements - oriented assessing and checking mechanism that leads to the selectivedistortion. An obvious logical question coming next is why the selective distortion is anation-wide phenomenon since the provision of distinct local public goods is costly andall local governments have not the same fiscal capabilities. The local finance is likely togo bankrupt for a relatively poor region if it tries to cater for central government’spreferences in the competition with other rich regions by providing distinct local publicgoods. As another innovation, the thesis introduces into the concept ofsoft-cost-constraint and points out that the benefit losses suffered from selectivedistortion have been shifted by local government officials to local people. In fact, localgovernment officials bear no responsibilities for their deeds in the provision of localpublic goods. Following this thought, it is easy to understand the common case in Chinathat the poorer the region is the more distinct local public goods (“zhengjigongcheng”inChinese) are supplied. Additionally, a signaling model in informati更多还原