The government boundary problem is very important to understand a series of problems such as what a government is, what a government should do, how big a government should be and what the relationships between government and society and market are. However, this issue is still not very deeply discussed. This paper suggests the government boundary is made up of two levels:on explicit level, government boundary means a government’s scale and resource in control;on implicit level, there are four kinds:power boundary, responsibility boundary, capability and efficiency boundary. Power boundary defines what power gov⁃ernment should has. Responsibility boundary reflects the range of what government should do. Capability boundary reflects what government do.Efficiency boundary can reflect in which range government’s behavior is efficient. Based this classification, this paper compare the four kinds and constructs a 2-dimension model to propose the optimization of government.%政府边界问题对于理解什么是政府，以及政府的合适规模。应该承担的职能以及政府与社会、市场的关系等一系列问题极为重要。政府边界问题实际上有两个层面，在显性层面体现为政府的实际规模和所支配的资源；在隐性层面体现为政府的权力边界、职责边界、效率边界和能力边界，其中权力边界界定了政府所拥有的权力运行范围，职责边界界定了政府应该要做什么和发挥什么作用，效率边界反映的是在哪个范围内政府的行为有效率的，能力边界体现的是政府所能够发挥作用的最大范围。这四种隐性边界共同界定并外化为政府显性边界，从而规范和塑造了政府与社会、市场之间的关系。进一步分析，可以将政府职能按照权力-职责维度以及效率-能力维度的高中低程度划分为九个区域，认为政府职能优化的基本原则是集中于高权力-职责维度和高效率-能力维度的区域，而退出低权力-职责维度和低效率-能力区域，对于中权力维度-职责的效率则应根据市场、社会的能力给予酌情考虑，适度涉足。
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