税收、租金与治理:理论与检验

发展中国家和转型国家普遍面临着如何提高治理水平的难题。本文从财政社会学这一独特视角出发,研究了国家的财政收入汲取方式对治理水平的影响。作者首先梳理了财政社会学中存在的一个隐含的理论假设:只有税收国家才能实现好的国家治理。然后,运用非洲国家的面板数据,对这一假设进行了检验。研究发现,财政社会学的这一理论假设是成立的。一个国家税收国家的特征越强,其治理质量就越高;反之,税收国家的特征越弱,或者租金国家的特征越强,其治理质量就越低。这一发现对发展中国家包括中国的国家建设有着重要启示。

Tax,Rent,and Governance:Theory and empirical test

In general,both developing and transitional countries face the difficult problem of how to improve the quality of governance.Viewing from a special perspective of the so-called fiscal sociology,this essay analyzes how revenue extraction by the state affects governance quality.It proceeds first by articulating the theoretical hypothesis implicitly held by fiscal sociology:only a tax-state could achieve good governance.Next,the hypothesis is tested with panel data of fifty African countries.It is found that this is a valid hypothesis.The more a country has the features of a tax-state,the higher its governance quality.This finding has great implications for state-building of developing countries including China.