1990年代中期以后，随着分税制制度的改革，地方政府将大量支出用于发展经济，而忽略了科教文卫支出，导致科教文卫支出在政府支出当中的比重明显下降。但是我们却发现，如果一个省委书记是大学学文科出身的（包括文史哲和社会科学），那么，这个省的科教文卫支出占政府支出的比重就要比由理工科书记领导的省高出约1.3个百分点。对于上述联系，我们排除了工作经历、政治关联、反向因果等因素，确认了地方官员教育背景对财政支出结构的影响。有趣的是，在省长的教育背景中，各个学科所占的比重与1980年代之前大学毕业生各个学科所占的比重非常接近，而省委书记的教育背景却越来越多的偏向于文科。这些发现很难用既有的有关中国治理的知识来解释。

 

Pro‐social leadership under authoritarianism：

Provincial leaders’ educational backgrounds and fiscal expenditure structure in China

 

Ming Lu  Lijun Xia  Jinchuan Xiao

 

Abstract：

Authoritarianism is regarded as being unaccountable for people's needs, but few studies have documented how authoritarian countries balance their policy goals. China is known to use a promotion system to incentivize local leaders to develop the economy, while neglecting social spending. This paper documents that more leaders having a liberal arts background have been promoted as top provincial leaders. After carefully ruling out other channels, we provide evidence that the shift of top provincial leaders’ college educational backgrounds from science/technology to liberal arts/social science has increased fiscal expenditure shares on science, education, culture and public health and cut economic construction expenditures accordingly. The finding is mainly driven by the post‐1994 period, when local leaders had stronger incentives for economic growth. This indicates that Chinese top authorities are promoting more pro‐social local leaders when providing pro‐growth incentives in general.

 

发表信息：

Economics of Transition, forthcoming

on line at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ecot.12193