Economics and Management School, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
School of Public Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, China.
PLoS One. 2022 Sep 9;17(9):e0273875. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0273875. eCollection 2022.
This paper evaluates the impact of China's fiscal decentralization reform, namely the "Province-Managing-County" (PMC) fiscal reform, on local governments' regional development strategy using county-level data in China covering 2000 to 2013. Surprisingly, after implementing the PMC fiscal reform, local governments will adjust their strategy of supporting zombie firms and attracting new firms, indicating that fiscal decentralization has changed the regional development strategies of local governments. We perform a difference-in-differences (DID) analysis and find that the PMC fiscal reform materially induces an average rise of 0.131 in newly added firms, an average decline of 0.383 in zombie firms, and no significant change in other firms. There is a pronounced substitution effect between zombie firms and newly added firms. We also find evidence supporting this argument: the government's subsidy, tax treatment, and financial support. Our study provides empirical evidence that local governments' regional development strategies can be affected by fiscal decentralization.
本文利用 2000 年至 2013 年中国县级数据，评估了中国财政分权改革（即“省管县”财政改革）对地方政府区域发展战略的影响。令人惊讶的是，实施“省管县”财政改革后，地方政府将调整支持僵尸企业和吸引新企业的策略，表明财政分权改变了地方政府的区域发展战略。我们进行了双重差分（DID）分析，发现“省管县”财政改革显著导致新企业增加了 0.131，僵尸企业减少了 0.383，而其他企业没有显著变化。僵尸企业和新企业之间存在明显的替代效应。我们还发现了支持这一论点的证据：政府的补贴、税收待遇和金融支持。本研究为财政分权会影响地方政府区域发展战略这一观点提供了经验证据。
