Research On The Ecological And Environmental Effects Of Chinese Transfer Payments

The problem of ecological environment has become an unavoidable development obstacle in the world’s development path.How to coordinate and deal with the contradiction between economic and social development and ecological environmental protection is extremely challenging and practical.Under the framework of a decentralized system,there is a lack of incentives for local environmental behavior and the possibility of "race to the bottom",which has increased the difficulty of ecological environment governance.In recent years,the ecological compensation policy has gradually entered the ecological environment governance policy system.Compared with the market-based ecological compensation policy,the transfer payment policy has produced a certain positive effect in solving the "insufficient incentive" problem of local government environmental governance.As an important part of the fiscal system,the transfer payment policy has been given a more important role in the era when finance has become the basis and an important pillar of national governance.Since 2008,the Chinese government has gradually established a comprehensive vertical ecological transfer payment system,not only incorporating ecological factors into the “factors” calculated by the transfer payment formula,but also designing a set of independent key ecological functional area transfer payments.So as to solve local government’s environmental incentives and coordination issues to promote China’s green sustainable development.Theoretically,transfer payments can not only directly affect the ecological environment,but also have an impact on the local government’s ecological environment governance behavior,thereby further affecting the entire economy and society.Making good use of the transfer payment policy tools and giving play to its unique policy advantages in the field of ecological environment governance will play an irreplaceable role in the construction of China’s ecological civilization and ultimately help China’s overall deepening reform process.However,there is currently no relevant literature to conduct a comprehensive and systematic analysis and evaluation of these issues.Based on this,this Ph.D.thesis will take the "ecological and environmental effects of China’s transfer payments" as the research theme in order to appropriately supplement the research in this field.The doctoral dissertation focuses on the issue of eco-environmental governance from the perspective of China’s decentralization system,including the incentive effect and coordination effect of the vertical transfer payment system into the same analysis framework for a comprehensive and systematic analysis.On the basis of using statistical yearbook,official websites and public application to obtain relatively complete and reliable data,focusing on the institutional characteristics and environmental governance issues of China,the doctoral dissertation analyzes the institutional causes of the heterogeneity of incentive effect and spatial coordination effect of transfer payment system,which has reference value for developing countries and countries in transition to formulate and implement ecological transfer payment policies Value.According to the research paradigm of "factual characteristics-theoretical mechanism-empirical evaluation-institutional inspiration",the main research contents of this doctoral dissertation are as follows.Firstly,from the perspective of ecological environment governance,the doctoral dissertation combs and summarizes the historical process and experience of China’s transfer system and eco-environmental governance.Secondly,from the perspective of economic and social development,the doctoral dissertation makes a theoretical analysis and empirical evaluation of the overall ecological environment effect of the transfer payment system.Thirdly,from the perspective of adaptability between system and policy,the doctoral dissertation evaluates the policy effect of ecological transfer system.Finally,from the perspective of incentive and coordination,the doctoral dissertation tests and compares the incentive effect and coordination effect of ecological transfer payment and non ecological transfer payment in local ecological environment governance.Specifically,the main conclusions and policy recommendations are as follows:First,the green structure system of China’s current transfer payment system is relatively lagging behind.The importance of transfer payment system and the scale of funds have been increasing,but the consideration of ecological environment management factors is limited.Only a small part of the general transfer payment,considers the financial expenditure of pollution control standards,and does not consider the potential "opportunity cost" of ecological environment protection.Meanwhile,part of the central government’s ecological transfer payments to local governments are from special transfer payments,which are mainly entrusted,shared and guided projects.However,due to the numerous project settings and multiple objectives,they are fragmented and scattered,which is not conducive to giving full play to the regulatory advantages of funds.However,the transfer payment of national key ecological functional areas included in the general transfer payment with "special attribute" is the largest vertical transfer payment in the current transfer payment system,which has the meaning of the ecological environment protection policy.Although the scale of such transfer payment has been growing continuously,the deviation in transfer payment is still not high.In general,although many factors and projects with green effect are included in the transfer payment system,there are many kinds and small scale.Compared with other transfer payment projects and severe ecological environment situation,its overall structure and proportion may be slightly insufficient,and the construction of green system framework system of transfer payment system still needs to be strengthened.Second,the green effect of China’s current vertical transfer payment system is insufficient.The pollution of economic and social development is the key reason for the lack of green effect of China’s current vertical transfer payment system.In the original transfer payment system,ensuring economic and social development is the main institutional incentive,which makes economic development based on environmental pollution,ecological damage and resource abuse,and then transfer payment has significant environmental pollution effect on the whole.At the same time,from the structural point of view,there are some differences in the impact mechanism of three different types of transfer payments on the ecological environment.Among them,the tax return will aggravate the environmental pollution of the region.In order to maintain the vested interests,the local government will further pursue economic growth and tax growth,resulting in the aggravation of the environmental pollution effect caused by development;the environmental effect of general transfer payment is the aggravation of the pollution caused by stimulating the regions with more transfer payments to accelerate the development and surpass the developed regions;special transfer payment The pollution impact of payment on the environment is mainly due to the local government’s arbitrary misappropriation of the special transfer payment funds,which makes the special transfer payment insufficient for the project funds originally used for ecological environment governance,resulting in the failure to play its original role.Therefore,the key to solve the shortage of green effect of current transfer payment system lies in changing the original extensive development mode,optimizing the incentive effect of transfer payment system and guiding local governments to establish a green and sustainable development concept.Third,the transfer payment of national key ecological functional areas has a positive policy effect,but the adaptability of system policy coordination needs to be improved.Due to the dual nature of general transfer payment and special transfer payment,the transfer payment of national key ecological functional areas not only achieves the goal of equalization of general transfer payment of public services,but also achieves the special function of ecological environment management.At the same time,the doctoral dissertation also finds that the transfer payment of national key ecological functional areas has different degrees of mismatch to the current financial system and environmental system.The decentralized financial system provides the space for local governments to operate on the use of financial funds,and the lag of the transformation of the official incentive mechanism,which may not be conducive to the exertion of the policy effect of the national key ecological functional areas.However,the decentralized environment system has produced positive improvement effect,which may benefit from the local information advantage under the decentralized environment system.Therefore,to give full play to the positive policy effect of transfer payment in national key ecological functional areas,we need to start from the basis of financial and environmental systems,and build a coordinated ecological environment governance framework system.Fourth,ecological transfer payment has the function of stimulating local environmental governance and coordinating local environmental competition.The doctoral dissertation finds that the ecological transfer payment has an important incentive role in promoting local governments to improve environmental quality,helping to alleviate the "bottom line competition" among regions,and playing a strong "coordination" role,while the incentive role in natural ecological improvement is not obvious.Although the design of non ecological transfer payment also includes the "ecological environment" factors,but its incentive and coordination role is very small.The behavior of stimulating local governments to improve the environment by ecological transfer payment is more "compensation" effect than "leverage effect",that is,local governments do not increase more environmental financial expenditure because of enjoying ecological transfer payment.Therefore,at present,the ecological transfer payment may only be a kind of "blood transfusion" ecological environment compensation mode,which can not fundamentally improve the incentive of local government to increase environmental protection financial expenditure.Finally,the doctoral dissertation finds that the incentive effect of ecological transfer payment is universal in all regions,but its coordination effect is different because of the difference of compensation cost between high transfer payment and low transfer payment regions,especially in the high transfer payment regions in the central and western regions.Generally speaking,the design of ecological transfer payment should not neglect its "coordination" role,and the lack of "incentive" effect is still the biggest restrictive factor faced by the ecological transfer payment system.Its reform focus is to continue to improve the role of "ecological environment" factors in the transfer payment system,adjust the assessment indicators of ecological functional areas,and make enough and righ incentives.