The Influence Of Transfer Payment Uncertainty On Governments’ Land Leasing

Under the background of centralized financial power and limited power of the central government,more power and limited income of local governments,there is a vertical financial imbalance.Therefore,it is adjusted through intergovernmental transfer payment.However,the problems existing in the fund distribution process lead to great uncertainty in the transfer payment income obtained by local governments,so local governments unable to form a stable expectation of this income and increase the risk of fiscal revenue.In theory,in order to reduce the dependence on transfer payment and narrow the gap of fiscal revenue and expenditure,local governments tend to increase preventive self owned financial resources by strengthening tax collection and management,land transfer,transfer of state-owned assets and so on.Since the income from land transfer is no longer involved in the sharing of fiscal revenue,local governments enjoy great autonomy in the income from land transfer,so land has become a freely disposable financial resource for local governments.Therefore,when facing the situation of reducing financial power and expanding administrative power,local governments have a strong motivation to increase their own financial revenue by expanding land transfer,so as to resolve the financial revenue risk caused by the uncertainty of transfer payment.This paper mainly studies the impact of transfer payment uncertainty on local government land transfer behavior.Through the two-way fixed effect model,this paper makes an empirical test using the municipal panel data of 307 prefecture level cities from 2004 to 2009.Different from the previous literature,this paper analyzes the impact of transfer payment uncertainty on local government land transfer behavior from two dimensions: land transfer area and land transfer income.The benchmark regression results show that the increase of transfer payment uncertainty has an incentive effect on the land transfer behavior of local governments,and significantly increases the land transfer area and land transfer income.Specifically,for every 1 percentage point increase in transfer payment uncertainty,the land transfer area increases by 0.103 percentage points and the land transfer income increases by 0.163 percentage points.In the mechanism test,this paper takes the financial pressure as the mechanism that the uncertainty of transfer payment affects the land transfer.Through empirical research,it is found that the impact of the uncertainty of transfer payment on the financial pressure is significantly positive at the level of 5%,When the uncertainty of transfer payment increases by 1 unit,the financial pressure increases by 0.0261 units.According to these conclusions,this paper believes that deepening the reform of transfer payment system,improving the structure of transfer payment,deepening the reform of fiscal and tax system,redefining government functions according to the level of economic development,excavating the financial resources of the central and western regions and reducing the dependence on transfer payment funds are effective measures to alleviate the financial pressure caused by the uncertainty of transfer payment.