Research On The Correlation Among Official Tenure,Fiscal Pressure And The Growth Of Land Transfer Revenue

In the past 20 years,land finance has become a common phenomenon among local governments in China.Land transfer revenue has increased 126-fold in 19 years,from 51.4 billion yuan in 1999 to 6.5 trillion yuan in 2018.With the rapid rise of land transfer revenue,there emerge the phenomena of the low efficiency of land resource allocation,the imbalance of industrial structure and the high price of houses caused by the land finance.Those have intensified the social concern about the year after year growth of land transfer income.At the present stage,it was particularly urgent to clarify the origin of the growth of land transfer revenue and restrain it.In theory,as the actual planners and implementers of urban land policies,prefecture-level city officials are the actual agents between the central government and local governments,and they show the characteristics of "economic man" in the theory of public choice.Theoretically,under the current financial pressure,local officials have the drive to grab land transfer revenue during their tenure.However,there are few relevant studies explaining the growth of land transfer revenue from the perspective of the work characteristics of prefecture-level city officials,especially the tenure of officials.Turning a blind eye to such personal characteristics as the tenure of officials in the phenomenon of the growth of land transfer revenue may cause policy mistakes to some extent.Based on the analysis above,this thesis selects the panel data of officials and cities in 280 prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2017 and describes the characteristics of prefecture-level city officials' tenure,financial pressure,and growth data of land transfer revenue respectively.The characteristics of data provide direct evidence to study correlation among the three.Through fixed effect model,system GMM model and threshold regression model,the empirical analysis finds the correlation among the official term,fiscal pressures and the growth of the land sales revenue.Empirical results found that:(1)When the prefectural official term ends,the growth of the city's land transfer revenue will be lower in the 1%significance level.The change of the city's party secretary has a negative impact on the growth of land transfer income in the 5%significance level.The influence coefficient is 2.526.The impact of change of mayor is not significant.Those facts show that the party secretary of the prefecture-level city officials is the key figure behind the impact of land transfer income growth.(2)For the party secretary,it was found that during the tenure of the party secretary,the growth rate of land transfer revenue was positively proportional to the tenure of the municipal party secretary in the significance level of 1%.And the growth rate of land transfer revenue increased by 2.097%for each additional year of the tenure.(3)By establishing the threshold effect model,it is found that there exists a single threshold effect with financial pressure as the threshold variable between the growth rate of land transfer revenue and the term of party secretary.The threshold value of financial pressure is 1.9738.When the financial pressure of prefecture-level cities exceeds the threshold value,the longer the party secretary holds office,the higher the growth rate of land transfer revenue will be at the significant level of 5%,with an impact coefficient of 3.84.In 2017,there were 85 prefecture-level cities' pressure that was higher than the threshold value;When the financial pressure is lower than 1.9738,the party secretary has a positive effect on the growth rate of land transfer revenue,but this effect is not significant.In 2017.there are 134 prefecture-level cities whose pressure is lower than the threshold.After that,as the level of urban economic development being the threshold variable,the threshold effect regression was set up to analyze the robustness.The results show that easing the financial pressure of local governments was the best choice to ease the high growth of land income of local governments and restrain the interference of local officials in the land market.Based on empirical tests,relevant policy suggestions are put forward:(1)We should set up a scientific political achievement system and guide local officials to establish a correct development direction.(2)Improve the financial management system and relieve the financial pressure of local governments.(3)Issue land policy according to the local condition of each city,in order to improve the efficiency of the policy at the prefecture level.(4)Increase the supply of land and optimize the structure of land supply.(5)Increase the market-oriented financing channels of government and make rational use of financial instruments such as special bonds and REITs.