Overview

This book examines China's fiscal decentralization and its economic impact through local government incentives. It focuses on three key areas: expenditure decentralization, revenue decentralization and intergovernmental transfers. The analysis weighs the benefits and costs of these fiscal practices in terms of China's economic development. The author observes that China’s high degree of fiscal expenditure and revenue decentralization has empowered local governments to pursue economic development vigorously. However, it has also created insufficient incentives to provide public welfare services and to adjust income distribution. This has exacerbated local protectionism and fragmented the domestic market. While intergovernmental transfers to less developed regions have gradually improved fiscal equalization and mitigated regional disparities since the 1994 tax-sharing reform, they have weakened the economic development incentives of recipient local governments. This book concludes with reform proposals for optimizing central–local fiscal relations. This book will be of interest to scholars of the Chinese economy, public finance and development economics.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ma Guangrong
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.720kg
ISBN:  

9781032916453

ISBN 10:   1032916451
Pages:   290
Publication Date:   01 April 2026
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

1 Introduction 2 Enhanced Insights into Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations in China 3 Fiscal Decentralization, Government Objectives and the Provision of Public Goods 4 Fiscal Decentralization, Local Protection and Market Segmentation 5 Fiscal Decentralization and Urban-rural Income Gap 6 An Empirical Study on the Impact of Fiscal Decentralization on the Provision of Public Goods: A Case Study of Public Security 7 Fiscal Decentralization and Regional Disparities: A Case Study on Social Security Pooling 8 Revenue Sharing and Local Government Tax Effort 9 Local Government Scale and Tax Enforcement 10 Testing the ‘Flypaper Effect’: The Influence of Transfer Payments on Local Fiscal Expenditures 11 Effects of Transfer Payments on Regional Economic Growth: Differences Between General and Special Transfer Payments 12 Impact of Transfer Payments on Population Migration 13 Conclusions and Policy Recommendations

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Author Information

Ma Guangrong is Professor and Vice Dean of the School of Finance at Renmin University of China. He is a Yangtze River Scholar of the Ministry of Education and the lead expert on a Major Project of the National Social Science Fund of China. His main areas of research are public finance and development economics. His research contributions have been recognized with multiple awards, including the Higher Education Outstanding Scientific Research Output Award from the Ministry of Education and the Zhang Peigang Award for Young Economists in Development Economics.

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