Study On The Spatial Effect Of Fiscal Decentralization On Water Pollution Control Efficiency In China

Since the reform and opening up,China’s rapid economic development,the process of industrialization has gradually accelerated,water pollution problems have also emerged.Because of the externality of water environment as public goods and the mobility of water pollution across regions,the central and local governments should intervene in water pollution control and play a leading role.The expenditure responsibility of water pollution control in China is mainly attributed to the local government,which uses economic tools such as tax and transfer payment to control water pollution effectively.As the supplier of water environment production,the local government will be affected by the financial system of our country.Therefore,this paper explores the impact of fiscal decentralization on water pollution control efficiency from a spatial perspective,which is of great practical significance to optimize fiscal decentralization and effectively solve water pollution control problems.Based on the empirical analysis of the Division of financial rights and the externalities of water pollution control in China,this paper uses the panel data of 31 provinces from 2004 to2017,using three-stage DEA method to measure the efficiency of water pollution treatment in China,it is found that the overall technical efficiency of water pollution treatment in China is low,the annual average is only 0.59,the pure technical efficiency is the main reason for the low efficiency of water pollution treatment,and the difference of water pollution treatment efficiency among regions is obvious,but with the change of time,the difference of water pollution treatment efficiency among the eastern,central and western regions gradually reduces.The measured comprehensive efficiency of water pollution control is taken as the explanatory variable.Tobit-SEM and Tobit-SDM models were used to investigate the impact of fiscal decentralization on water pollution control efficiency.The results show that: first,different fiscal decentralization measures have different effects on water pollution control efficiency,and fiscal decentralization promotes the efficiency of water pollution control.Fiscal Revenue and Fiscal Autonomy restrain the efficiency of water pollution control,and fiscal autonomy has a positive space spillover effect on the efficiency of water pollution control.Secondly,the addition of decentralization indicators under provincial level shows that simply increasing the degree of fiscal decentralization at the grass-roots level can not improve the efficiency of regional water pollution control,but will reduce the positive role of decentralization of expenditures,increasing the negative effect of income decentralization and the negative effect of autonomy.Third,the effect of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of water pollution control is affected by regional development,and the positive effect of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of water pollution control is the largest in the eastern region,the negative effects of fiscal revenue decentralization and fiscal autonomy are the greatest in the central region.