关键词: 分税制 , 财政激励 , 基础设施

Abstract:

It is believed that the political promotion incentives faced by local government is a crucial reason to explain China s infrastructure investment according to existing literature. However, the statistic data shows evidence opposing to this point. Before 1995, infrastructure capital stock has coincident growth rate with GDP. After 1995, the growth of infrastructure capital stock is significantly faster than GDP growth. Since the promotion incentives have not changed since 1978, existing literature cannot explain why local government s infrastructure investment behavior is different before and after 1995. Based on provincial panel data, the authors present a fiscal hypothesis to explain local government s behavior, and empirically identify the determinants on infrastructure spending. The paper finds that, local government s preference infrastructure investment preference was mainly determined by the changes in fiscal incentives in 1994. This implies that further perfects of sharetaxing system are vital to improve local government s expenditure structure

Key words: taxsharing reform , fiscal incentives , infrastructure