政府间财政金融关系是大国治理的基础性制度，深刻影响并塑造着中央和地方各级政府行为与经济社会发展。政府间财政关系研究成果丰硕，但文献对金融分权亦即政府间金融关系关注不足，也未能将政府间财政、金融关系纳入统一的研究视角予以综合考察。另外，伴随我国社会主要矛盾的转化，地区发展不平衡问题的重要性上升，亟需构建促进地区协调发展的政策体系。本文聚焦政府间财政金融关系与地区协调发展，通过开展政策评估，探讨如何优化财政金融体制安排以实现更有效率、更加公平的发展，以期为深化新时代政府间财政金融关系改革、促进地区协调发展和基本公共服务均等化进程提供务实思考和经验借鉴。本文系统回顾了文献进展和我国制度背景与特征事实，从深入评估省直管县财政体制改革对财政、金融资源地区间协调配置和地区经济协调发展的影响入手，分三个层次展开实证研究：第一，考察财政层级改革对省以下财政资源地区间协调配置的影响。具体而言，省级政府能否通过统筹财政再分配提高省以下财政收支均等化程度？低层级政府财政激励对均等化效果产生何种影响？第二，评估财政层级改革对金融资源地区间协调配置的影响。在金融分权深化背景下，财政经济实力不同的地区获取和利用金融资源的能力有何差异？这将如何影响地区差距？第三，同步考察财政层级改革如何通过财政和金融渠道作用于经济增长和地区均衡。本文的主要创新与学术贡献有：第一，揭示了合理引导低层级地方政府财政激励对缩小地区间财政收支差距的重要意义，指出上级政府财政统筹和再分配政策无法直接促进地区财政收支均等化，高层级政府在政策制定过程中应特别注重引导和提升欠发达地区政府的正向激励，实现各级政府激励有机协同、正向叠加，方可促进地区协调发展。第二，探究了在政府间隐性金融分权体制下金融资源地区间配置的主要逻辑，发现经济基础好、财政实力强的地区获取银行贷款、债券融资等新资源的能力更强，使地区间政府融资差距拉大，发达地区雄厚的财政经济实力成为导致政府融资规模扩张的主要机制，而欠发达地区的赶超晋位压力受融资能力约束无法得到充分释放，扩张举债规模的主观意愿无法转变为客观现实。第三，基于财政—金融协同视角揭示了地方政府在面临财政收支压力时对土地财政和平台融资渠道的策略选择差异，指出欠发达地区政府由于财政经济实力较弱、运用市场机制进行举债融资能力不足、土地指标相对宽松更偏好土地财政渠道，反之发达地区政府更偏好平台融资渠道。
Intergovernmental relations serve as the basic institution of big country governance, which profoundly shape the behavior of central and local governments, as well as the efficiency and fairness of economic development. Fruitful achievements have been made on researches about intergovernmental fiscal relations, but literature doesn’t pay much attention to financial decentralization, i.e., intergovernmental financial relations, and also fails to comprehensively examine these two relations in a unified perspective. Moreover, the problem of unbalanced development has become more severe in China recently. Thus, this thesis examines the issue of intergovernmental fiscal and finance relations and regional coordinated development based on thorough policy evaluation, aiming to provide more solid evidence and theoretical thoughts to deepen the reform of this area, to achieve more efficient and fair economic development, and to promote the equalization of basic public services.This thesis systematically reviews five strands of related literature, the institutional background and stylized facts of China’s intergovernmental fiscal and finance relations. Then in-depth policy evaluation of the "Province Managing County" (PMC) reform is conducted, assessing its impact on inter-regional allocation of fiscal and financial resources, and on regional disparity. The empirical analyses proceed from three aspects: First, assess the impact of PMC reform on fiscal allocation among regions. Specifically, can fiscal reallocating policies and tools, such as fiscal transefers and tax rebates of high-level governments, fill the regional fiscal gap? What role does the incentive of low-level governments play in this procedure? Second, evaluate the impact of PMC reform on the allocation of financial resources among regions. In the context of deepening of financial decentralization, what are the differences in the ability of obtaining and utilizing financial resources among governments of different economic status? How will this affect regional disparity? Third, study the impact of PMC reform on city’s economic growth and regional disparity through fiscal and financial channels in a unified framework.The potential innovations and academic contributions are as follows: First, this thesis reveals the importance of guiding low-level governments’ fiscal incentives to narrow the gap of regional fiscal capacity and expenditure intensity, especially of improving the positive incentives of less developed regions, and also points out that higher-level governments’ fiscal reallocating policies cannot directly promote regional fiscal equalization. Second, it reveals the logic of financial resources’ allocation among regions under implicit financial decentralization. Evidence illustrates that regions with better economic foundation and stronger fiscal strength are more capable of obtaining new resources such as bank loans and municipal bonds, and less developed regions are not capable of expanding their government financing scale despite the pressure of catching up. This mechanism tends to cause a larger gap in government financing among regions. Third, this thesis analyzes the impact of PMC reform on regional economic growth in a unified perspective including both fiscal and finance channels. Empirical evidence indicates that different strategies have been adopted for local governments when facing fiscal pressures along with the PMC reform. Governments of less developed regions prefer land finance channels to boost the economy, as they face rather weaker economic strength, tighter financial constraint, and looser land indicators, whereas governments of developed regions prefer the platform financing channel. Local governments choose differentiated economic boosting strategies based on their own resource endowments, and take advantage of land finance and government financing vehicles respectively to promote regional economic growth. The above procedure helps promote regional coordinated development.
