基于居民收入倍增视角下我国民生财政发展与问题研究

十八大报告明确指出我国在2020年实现居民收入倍增,为我国经济发展指明了方向。自新中国成立以来,随着经济的发展,我国公共财政逐渐向民生财政发生演变。笔者通过Eviews软件分析了民生财政与经济增长之间的密切相关性,同时指出虽然民生财政支出结构在经济增长的环境下不断优化,但是还存在一般公共服务支出占民生财政比重过大、医疗卫生比例还需要提高、教育支出占民生财政支出比重不均衡、社会保障和就业支出整体水平偏低等问题,因此,在居民收入倍增的计划下,优化民生财政结构尤其重要,应通过降低一般性公共服务支出、提高医疗卫生比例和教育支出、增加社会保障和就业支出等措施满足居民收入倍增环境下对社会保障的需要。     

税收、财政支出政策与宏观经济运行的内在影响机制——基于中国不同省份的面板数据分析

财政政策对经济运行的影响是宏观经济研究的核心问题.但相关文献都侧重于财政支出、税收等对宏观经济的单方面影响.本文构建了基于财政支出、税收的内生经济增长模型.从模型推导可知,在给定税收、财政支出政策的变化路径时,税率与经济增长存在"倒-U"型关系,政府投资性支出与经济增长之间正相关,社会福利不仅与政府支出规模有关,还受到其支出结构的影响.实证检验显示,在我国经济运行中,总产出、消费、投资、政府支出、税率、利息率、工资水平之间存在长期均衡关系,且存在最优宏观税率,政府投资性支出对经济增长率存在正向影响,但对社会福利的影响存在不确定性,且在不同经济区域上存在较大差异性.这说明财政支出、收入政策的稳定性,差异性的区域税收制度安排和政府支出结构,有利于不同区域经济发展.     

财政分权与地方政府行政管理支出——基于中国省级面板数据的实证研究

行政管理支出具有双重属性:过多的支出不利于经济增长,使地方政府在竞争中处于劣势而不利于官员的晋升,同时有违中央政府的宏观政策目标;但能直接提高地方政府官员个人的福利水平。所以,地方政府及官员对行政管理支出存在两难选择。本文利用我国30个省(自治区、直辖市)1998—2006年的面板数据对财政分权与行政管理支出的关系进行实证研究和稳健性检验。主要结论是:在中国特色财政分权的制度环境下,地方政府在财政支出自由裁量权扩大时,总体效应是加大了行政管理支出的规模。同时,行政人员规模与行政管理支出存在显著的正相关关系。地区经济发展水平、资源禀赋、社会结构等因素对行政管理支出也有显著性的影响。在公共财政体制改革的背景下,其他公共财政支出项目(社会保障支出除外)对行政管理支出存在显著的"挤出"效应。     

地方政府公共服务供给模式比较研究——以湖北省武汉市为例

随着新公共管理理论、新公共服务理论等理论的进一步发展和英国等国家的实践经验,公共服务供给打破了原有的政府单一供给模式,向多元化供给模式发展。结合武汉市在城市建设和公共文化服务两个领域的供给现状,分析对比了引入市场的多元供给模式和政府主导的单一供给模式。对优化我国公共财政支出结构、提高公共服务供给水平和效率进行了探讨。     

公共支出效率评价——带非自主决定输入的两阶段数据包络模型

公共支出的效率评价是政府进行有效公共支出管理的基础,正确评价公共支出效率也是各国政府需要研究和解决的问题.经济学是通过比较公共支出前后的社会福利变化来衡量公共支出效率的,然而,社会福利是由公共支出与私人支出共同决定的,而且公共支出的增加是有机会成本的.因此,我们不能通过忽略私人支出,而单独分析公共支出对社会福利的影响的方式来衡量公共支出的效率.同时,各种原因共同导致政府通过公共支出提供的公共产品组合往往与社会公众的实际需求不一致.本文尝试在分析公共支出的效率时,把私人支出也纳入分析的范畴,同时提出了一种方法--带非自主决定输入的两阶段数据包络模型,试图解决在政府与公众偏好不一致情况下的公共支出的效率评价问题,并按照中国的数据进行了实证检验.     

行政管理支出、城市化与经济增长的动态计量分析

建立在向量自回归模型的基础上,运用Granger因果关系检验、协整理论和向量误差修正模型分析我国行政管理支出、城市化和经济增长之间的动态关系。结果表明：我国城市化发展滞后于经济发展;城市化水平的提高导致行政管理支出的膨胀。长期来说,三者之间存在稳定的均衡关系,其中,经济增长与城市化水平正相关、与行政管理支出负相关;行政管理支出与城市化水平正相关。短期来说,我国的经济增长和城市化水平都有惯性上升的趋势,其它变量的波动对其影响不显著;短期内行政管理支出也有惯性增长趋势,同时受城市化水平波动的影响;而且,三个变量对上一期非均衡的校正能力都很弱。     

财政农业支出与农业经济发展的关系

我国财政农业支出与农业经济发展之间不仅存在着密切的正相关性,还存在着十分明确的单向因果关系,国家财政农业支出是引起农业生产总值变化的重要原因,但二者并非简单的线性关系。在1990年~2008年间,我国财政农业支出对农业经济发展的贡献率约为28.5%,表明财政农业支出在很大程度上促进了我国农业经济的发展,促进作用较为明显。加快我国财政农业支出在农业经济发展中的促进作用,不仅要注重财政农业支出总量,更要重视调整和优化财政农业支出结构,加强财政农业支出资金监管,扶持现代农业园区建设。     

建立健全我国基本公共服务体系的现实性与对策探讨

加强社会建设,建立健全基本公共服务体系是中国特色社会主义具有战略意义的组成部分,更是完成十二五规划的关键所在。我国当前基本公共服务体系建设方面存在公共服务支出比例偏低、区域之间公共服务支出的人均量差异过大、歧视性供给以及公共服务提供过程中效率低下等问题。对此,必须从提高政府保障能力、推进体制改革、创新社会管理、推进公共服务均等化等方面积极探索解决。     

准确理解和深刻认识服务型政府建设

服务型政府建设中的认识误区,对服务型政府建设产生十分不利的影响,即导致一些地方没有将服务型政府建设摆在行政体制改革和政府管理创新的重要位置,且忽视服务型政府建设的全面性和全局性、长期性和可持续性,使服务型政府建设与经济社会发展难以协调,与其他改革措施难以配套,服务型政府建设流于形式。服务型政府,是指在以人为本和执政为民的理念指导下,将公共服务职能上升为政府的核心职能,通过优化政府结构、创新政府机制、规范政府行为、提高政府效能,以不断满足城乡居民日益增长的公共需求的政府。其主要特征:在政府职能结构中,公共服务职能成为政府的主要职能或核心职能;在政府组织结构中,公共服务部门成为政府的主要部门或核心部门;在政府财政支出结构中,公共服务支出应成为政府的主要支出;服务型政府同时必须是民主政府、责任政府、法治政府和廉洁政府;服务型政府的运行机制必须规范有序、公开透明、便民高效。正因为服务型政府体现了人民政府的本质,体现了时代发展的要求,代表了我国行政体制改革的根本方向,因此,建设服务型政府是深化行政体制改革的核心和重点。     

我国政府公共服务职能缺失分析——基于不完全合约的行为经济学解释

不论从公共产品理论的规范角度,还是从与同等发展水平国家的比较角度,我国公共服务支出都存在很大缺口.将行为经济学中经济主体面对不同财政约束下的风险选择理论,运用到政府面对财政赤字与财政盈余时的风险偏好,同时通过一个不完全的合约将个人的心理账户对接到政府的心理账户上,研究财政约束对政府心理成本的影响,可以从另一个视角解释我国公共服务财政支出存在缺口的原因.     

财政公共化改革的三个基本任务--支出结构调整、公开透明与责任落实

公共财政是公共管理和社会管理的经济基础,同时公共财政的运行制度和游戏规则是作为政治行政体制一部分的上层建筑。建立公共财政框架,需要对经济体制、政治行政体制进行全方位的改革。关键任务有:一是调整财政支出结构,确保社会公共需要的满足;二是提高公开透明程度,使公众确实能够了解、监督财政运行状况;三是落实财政责任,给权力以充分对应的制约。后两个任务的核心是民主和法治,旨在建立财政公共化的制度基础,关键是要重建政府预算制度。从历年的国家审计报告看,解决这个问题非常紧迫、相当艰巨、极端重要。     

瓦格纳定律之英国实证检验及其对中国公共财政建设的启示——新公共管理运动背景下的探索

新公共管理运动的兴起,从理论上看财政规模弱化不可避免。英国作为新公共管理运动的发源国之一,其行政管理改革充分贯穿和系统展现了新公共管理理念的精髓。以英国新公共管理运动以来(1979—2006)的财政数据为依据,对瓦格纳定律进行实证检验,具有显著的代表意义。根据英国财政数据的研究结果与新公共管理理念高度吻合,表明瓦格纳定律在英国的适应期已经结束。有理由认为,只要推行新公共管理运动,瓦格纳定律就难以得到支持。鉴于新公共管理运动的世界性,及其不断推进的必然性,应当重新审视瓦格纳定律的客观性。有鉴于此,中国应该顺应世界新公共管理运动的潮流,立足于中国现实和中国社会经济转型的发展趋势,本着服务型政府的内在要求,适时调整财政政策。     

Well-Being in the Welfare State: Level Not Higher, Distribution Not More Equitable

The terms well-being and welfare are Often bracketed together, especially well-being and state welfare. The level of well-being is believed to be higher in welfare states, and its distribution more equitable. This theory is tested here in a comparative study of 41 nations from 1980 to 1990. The size of state welfare is measured by social security expenditures. The well-being of citizens is measured in terms of the degree to which they lead healthy and happy lives. Contrary to expectation, there appears to be no link between the size of the welfare state and the level of well-being within it. In countries with generous social security schemes, people are not healthier or happier than in equally affluent countries where the state is less open-handed. Increases or reductions in social security expenditure are not related to a rise or fall in the level of health and happiness either. There also appears to be no connection between the size of state welfare and equality in well-being among citizens of the state. In countries where social security expenditure is high, the dispersion of health and happiness is not smaller than in equally prosperous countries with less social insurance spending. Again, increases and reductions in social security expenditure are not linked with equality in health and happiness among citizens. This counterintuitive result raises five questions: (1) Is this really true? (2) If so, what could explain this lack of effect? (3) Why is it so difficult to believe this result? (4) How should this information affect social policy? (5) What can we learn from further research?     

Housing and the Welfare State in Norway

This article discusses housing and the welfare state in Norway in 1980 and 2005 by applying Esping‐Andersen's theories of welfare state regimes to this sector. How should Norwegian housing policy be understood in light of Esping‐Andersen's conceptual framework, and what is the impact of post‐industrial change? In 1980, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by social‐democratic traits such as market regulation, substantial public expenditure and universal subsidies for both renters and a large owner‐occupied housing sector. The effects of post‐industrial changes, including deregulation of the credit and housing markets, marked a major turn in housing policy and the housing market in Norway. By 2005, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by traits that are typical of a liberal welfare regime: market economics, low public expenditure and subsidies for small, targeted groups, while other segments of the Norwegian welfare state remain characterised by social‐democratic traits. Esping‐Andersen's claim that the effect of post‐industrial transformation was different in different welfare regimes is thus not supported by the case of the Norwegian housing sector.     

Are bigger governments better providers of public goods? Evidence from air pollution

Theories explaining government size and its consequences are of two varieties. The first portrays government as a provider of public goods and a corrector of externalities. The second associates larger governments with bureaucratic inefficiency and special-interest-group influence. What distinguishes these alternatives is that only in the former is governmental expansion generally associated with an increase in social welfare. In the latter, the link between government size and public goods provision (or social welfare) is negative. We study the empirical significance of these competing claims by examining the relationship between government size and a particular public good, namely environmental quality (notably, air quality measured by SO₂ concentrations), for 42 countries over the period 1971–1996. We find that the relationship is negative, even after accounting for the quality of government (quality of bureaucracy and the level of corruption). This result may not prove conclusively that the growth of government has been driven by factors other than concern for the public good, but it creates a presumption against the theory of government size that emphasizes public good provision.     

The determinants of structural changes in public budgets: a theoretical and empirical analysis for the Federal Republic of Germany

Abstract. Since there is no generally accepted and satisfactory theory that can explain structural changes in public budgets over time, this article focuses on the determinants of the budget structure and its changes over time. Thus, it would already be an improvement in the development of a complex and coherent theory of budgetary structures and its changes if initially appropriate variables could be identified which could explain in the short, intermediate and long runs the structural changes in public budgets with respect to the various governmental levels. Potential candidates for explaining structural changes could be socio-economic, political and institutional variables. These sets of variables will be analyzed here in detail for the Federal Republic of Germany for the time period 1964–1978. The results are very similar to those found in various U.S. studies. In comparably developed nations with similar political (federal) structures, institutional factors seem to play the dominant role in determining and explaining changes in the budgetary structure.     

Devine intervention? Lessons in systemic retrenchment from Canada’s most generous welfare state

This article tackles the importance of systemic retrenchment in welfare state research by focusing on two core elements neglected in the literature: the civil service and governmental revenues. Saskatchewan has possessed key ingredients associated with generous welfare states: a dominant left-wing party, a supportive bureaucracy and important non-visible fiscal revenues. According to the comparative welfare state literature, this is also an excellent recipe for maintaining a generous welfare state amid attempts, primarily by right-wing governments, to scale it back. Yet, most social indicators in the post-Devine years demonstrate that Saskatchewan can no longer be considered a leading welfare state in Canada. Reforms to the bureaucracy and a host of financial measures resulting in a near default explain why the Devine government was successful in its efforts to disrupt the CCF/NDP social legacy despite the fact that the NDP regained power for 16 years afterwards.     

Developing new measures of welfare state change and reform

Abstract. Since the publication of Gøsta Esping–Andersen's The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Esping–Andersen 1990), which built its typologies on a rich database of detailed programme characteristics, it has been generally accepted that measures of social expenditure are an inferior, and even a misleading, source of information concerning the character of welfare state development. The problem is, however, that the kinds of detailed programme data Esping–Andersen used are not routinely available, while the quality of social expenditure data has been improving rapidly, culminating in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) now regularly updated and highly disaggregated Social Expenditure Database (SOCX). This article explores the possibility of using SOCX to devise measures of the extent, structure and trajectory of welfare state change and reform in 21 OECD countries over the period 1984 to 1997. On the basis of these measures, it suggests that there has been almost no sign of systematic welfare retrenchment in recent years and only limited evidence of major structural transformation or programmatic reorientation.     

Community welfare services in Urban China: A public-private experiment

The social welfare system in China has been undergoing transition since the economic reform in 1978 when the Chinese government began introducing a series of welfare changes aimed at shifting responsibility from the government to a combination of government, communities, enterprises and individuals. Consequently, many cities in China have been experimenting with community-based welfare services — a state-sanctioned practice based on socialist ideology, but at the same time market driven and incorporating the private sector. This new welfare approach started an ongoing dialogue in China regarding the role of the public and private sectors in social welfare, the balance between socialist and capitalist values, and the input of the free market and political democracy. This paper presents a case study of an urban community in Beijing. It examines the policy of community-based services and discusses its implementation in urban communities. The research suggests that the public-private coordination is, within limits, effective in meeting people’s needs in the community. However, further attention should be given to the sharing of responsibility for welfare between the public and private sectors so as to protect vulnerable populations. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Denver. Her major interests of research focus on social development and community service, law and social work, and comparative welfare policies. He was also chair professor of Social Work Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and founding Dean of the School of Social Development at the University of Minnesota-Duluth. He has written extensively on international social development and human security.