Determinants of Tax Effort of China—A Spatial Econometric Analysis

全世界有許多國家正面臨嚴峻的財政赤字危機，中國大陸也無法幸免於難，因此如何增加財政收入和減少財政赤字實為重要的全球議題，更是中國大陸近年來應當重視的問題。在增加財政收入方面，課稅努力不失為一種可靠的方法，過去也不乏探討課稅努力影響因素的文獻。但以往文獻在沒考慮到空間相關性的情況下，只使用傳統線性迴歸模型或是普通的固定效果模型去作實證分析。故本文納入了空間相關性的因素，用空間計量模型去分析各種變數對課稅努力的影響，以彌補過去研究因為缺少考慮空間相關性而產生的謬誤。 本文研究1997年至2015年的課稅努力影響因素，在選擇空間計量模型前先進行Wald檢定，得到隨機效果的空間杜賓模型為最適用於本篇研究的結論。實證結果發現，在不同課稅努力的衡量標準下，對其有影響的因素也不盡相同。總的來說，經濟發展程度、工業化程度和貿易開放程度提高會促進課稅努力；反之，書記任期和書記虛擬變數對課稅努力則有顯著的負向影響。 最後，本文認為地方政府政策應隨課稅努力衡量方式不同而訂立相異的經濟或財政政策，方能確實得到政府希冀的效果。Many countries including China are facing severe fiscal problems, hence raising fiscal revenues and reducing fiscal expenses are top issues to the whole world. As for raising revenues, tax effort would be a feasible way. Though many literatures considered about this factor, few of them took spatial autocorrelation into account. This study uses a spatial econometric analysis to investigate determinants of tax effort in China, in the hope of mitigating estimation biases due to the lack of considering spatial autocorrelation. This study uses China’s provincial-level panel data of 31 provinces from 1997 to 2015 to estimate empirical models. After executing Wald test, it is found that the spatial durbin model (SDM) is the most suitable model for this panel data. The empirical results differ due to different tax effort measurements. In general, economic growth, industrialization level, and trade openness will enhance the local government’s tax effort in China. On the contrary, tenure of provincial secretary and dummy variable of secretary change will decrease the local government’s tax effort in China. This study thus suggests that the China’s local governments should make different economic and fiscal policies based on different measurements of tax effort, and then they will reach their goals of improving fiscal situation