关键词: 财政支出竞争, 晋升激励, 标尺竞争

Abstract: Identifying the underlying mechanisms of local fiscal expenditure competition has important theoretical and practical implications for improving fiscal institutions and regulating intergovernmental competition.Based on the panel data of 277 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2019, this paper investigates the yardstick competition mechanism in fiscal expenditure competition. It constructs a two-dimension identification framework: administrative boundary, and institutional change, while employs both the multi-regime spatial autoregressive model and the difference-in-differences approach for empirical analysis. The results reveal two key findings: First, fiscal expenditure competition among intra-provincial cities is significantly stronger than that among inter-provincial cities, reflecting the boundary effect of yardstick competition embedded in administrative subordination. Second, with the central government's performance appraisal system shifting its assessment focus from economic growth to high-quality development, competition in social expenditure of the local government has markedly increased, indicating that fiscal behavior is highly responsive to institutional changes. By uncovering the institutional foundations and dynamic evolution of fiscal expenditure competition, this study enriches Chinese contextual understanding of fiscal federalism theory and offers empirical support and policy insights for improving official evaluation system and optimizing fiscal competition behavior.

Key words: Fiscal Expenditure Competition, Promotion Incentives, Yardstick Competition