The Impact Of Local Government Competition On The Urban-rural Income Gap Under The Background Of Chinese-style Decentralization

Chinese fiscal federalism urges the local government to occupy the main position in realizing the economic development,which leads to the government's motivation to promote the development by intensifying inter-regional competition.This "growth incentive" feature leads to the structural problem of the continuous expansion of urban-rural income gap through unequal allocation of resources and the formulation of urban biased policies.And the urban-rural income gap is of great significance to optimize the income distribution pattern and realize the smooth operation of the economy.Based on the characteristic facts of China's economic growth and high urban-rural income gap,this paper constructs indicators such as fiscal decentralization level,local government competition and urban-rural income gap,and conducts empirical analysis by means of GMM and panel threshold estimation with the panel data of 31 provinces from 2008 to 2017,and provide an empirical basis for the mechanism and institutional basis to evaluate the role of its cross-indicators in the process of the change of the income gap between urban and rural residents.The results show that:(1)The statistical relationship between fiscal federalism and income gap is significant,and the threshold estimation results show that there is an obvious "U" relationship,fiscal expenditure decentralization is "N" type,and fiscal self-sufficiency rate is inverted "N" type.(2)Local government competition has obvious promoting effect on the income gap with staged characteristics.At present,the level of local government competition has far exceeded the acceptable level.(3)The synergy between fiscal decentralization and local government competition significantly enlarges the income gap between urban and rural areas.Accordingly,the paper puts forward some policy suggestions,such as perfecting the decentralization system in the financial system,innovating and implementing the green GDP mechanism in the evaluation system of officials' achievements,and optimizing the structure of local fiscal expenditure in the policy structure.