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| How does the Central General Transfer Payment Affect the Fiscal Expenditure Structure？——An Analysis Based on the Local Soft Budget Constraint |
| Zhang Qichun1 Miao Zihao2 |
| (1.Institute of China Rural Studies， Central China Normal University， Wuhan 430079；2.School of Public Administration， Central China Normal University， Wuhan 430079) |
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Abstract What impact will the central general transfer payment have on the local fiscal behavior？ Through the construction of a theoretical framework which includes such fundamental elements as soft budget constraint， incentive mechanism and fiscal competition， this paper analyzes the specific mechanism of the ways in which central general transfer payment affects local fiscal behavior， and conducts an empirical test. The test results show that： (1) the central general transfer payment will give rise to the local soft budget constraint behavior and produce competitive effect on soft budget constraint at local fiscal level， in order to obtain more general transfer payment； (2) affected by strong economic incentives， local governments tend to compete for the incremental amount of general transfer payments in the field of production and construction expenditures. Compared with the economically developed regions， the underdeveloped regions that actually obtain more incremental amount of general transfer payments are more likely to encounter the problem of biased allocation of the incremental amount of general transfer payments. The research results reveal that the high scale of central general transfer payments at the present stage is the “forced reversal” resulted from the soft constraint behavior of local budgets， and there is a lack of standardized incentive for the implementation of transfer payments. The expanded scale of general transfer payments cannot significantly improve the level of local public welfare expenditures.
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Received: 21 November 2022
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2022, Vol. 61 
