当前我国地方政府在经济发展中过度依赖土地出让金收入,由此产生的“土地财政”现象已经成为了威胁地方财政体制稳定的一大隐患。本文通过对“分税制”改革实施以来我国地方政府土地出让行为变动的分析,提出了自己的假说:中央政府土地政策对地方土地出让合约自由的管制是扭曲地方政府土地出让行为,进而引发“土地财政”现象的一个重要原因。本文利用我国2003—2009年的省际面板数据,使用动态面板数据模型对这一假说进行了计量实证检验。本文认为,应当改革现行的中央一地方财政收入分配关系,提高中央财政在土地出让金中的分享比例,但在土地出让合约选择上应给予地方政府更多的自由。与此同时,应当提高地方政府在增值税分享中所占的比例,将“扩围”之后的增值税地方分成部分作为地方政府的主体财政收入。上述政策组合是化解“土地财政”危局、进而发挥“县际竞争”机制给地方经济发展带来的激励作用的一套可行方案。
The operation of the local governments in China has become excessively dependent on land-based financial revenue. This dependence has been regarded as a major threat to the local public financial system. In this paper, we analyzed the strategies of land transfer taken by the local governments after financial reform in 1994, and proposed the hypothesis that the restrictions from the central government against land transfer in the local would distort the incentive structure of the local governments which leads to so-called land-based finance phenomenon. Using the panel data of 30 provinces from 200a to 2009, we empirically tested our hypothesis through Dynamic Panel Data estimation. The findings indicate that central government should raise its shares in the land transfer fees but reduce restraints on local governments' land transfer in the upcoming fiscal decentralization reform. At the same time, local governments' shares in the value-added tax should be increased to make it one of the main sources of local government revenue. We think this policy suggestion could be a feasible scheme to reform land-based finance structure and to improve the "County Competition" Mechanism in China.