中文摘要：

中国式财政分权缺乏“用手投票”和“用脚投票”机制约束，地方政府为追求政绩最大化，试图通过学校合并产生规模经济来降低生均教育财政支出，是地方断章取义执行中央中小学布局调整政策的主要原因。以中国31个省2001-2010年的面板模型结果显示，财政分权度越高，地方政府合并中小学力度越大，学校数越少，生均预算内教育支出越低。纠正财政分权下地方政府布局调整的行为扭曲，要科学规划学校布局，改进绩效考核指标，加强明文和程序约束。

英文摘要：

Due to lack of the ＂hand vote＂ and ＂vote with feet＂ mechanism in China＇s fiscal decentralization, the local governments try to pursue their maximal political achievements by reducing per-student educational fiscal expenditure through scale economy resulted from school merges, which is the major reason for the local governments＇ misinterpreted implementation of the centre govern- ment＇s primary and secondary school layout adjustment policy. The empirical results based on the panel data modal across 31 provinces from 2001 to 2010 in China show that the higher degree of fiscal decentralization, the greater the local governments＇ efforts in merging primary and secondary schools, the less the number of schools, the lower the per student educational expenditure in budget. In order to solve this problem, this paper puts forward such policy recommendations as planning school layout scientically, improving the performance assessment indicators, strengthening the con-straints of rules and procedures, and so on.