Study On Agricultural Research Performance Evaluation Based On The Public Goods Theory

China is in the process of the transition from planned economic system to practical market, the problems raised by the New Public Management Movement in the 1990s have been highlighted again in the current public administration field of China. Agricultural research is a special public product. The 21st century agricultural scientific research is referred to as a "global public goods". In 2012, first document of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has clearly put forward that agricultural scientific research has "publicity, fundamentality and sociality" characters. The performance evaluation is one of the three big problems of contemporary new public management. In the background of the limited financial and institutional transformation, discussing the performance evaluation of agricultural research has important theoretical and practical significance. This main study contents and conclusions are showed as follows:First of all, the paper analyzes the realistic necessity and particularity of the agricultural scientific research as a public product, the applicability of the ideas of performance evaluation for agricultural research under the New Public Management, and the characteristics of agricultural research performance evaluation. Moreover, generalize contra posing financial input to China agricultural research system, agricultural research quantity, strength and structure, and its characteristics of development and change nearly 20 years. In a conclusion, agricultural research has the nature of public goods; China’s agricultural research system reform has obvious stage characteristics, with rapid development and growth but lack of stability.Secondly, the paper analyzes the process and effect of agricultural research investment stimulates agricultural economy through intermediate link of research achievements. Agricultural research promotes the development of agricultural economy can be divided into two stages, namely agricultural research input into agricultural research output and agricultural research output into productivity. Based on Impulse Response Function and variance decomposition method, empirically analyze the causal relationship between agricultural research input, output and agricultural economy, and its intensity and variance contribution ratio. Granger causality analysis shows, there is a one-way causal relationship between the financial input of agricultural research and economy development. The causal relationship is mainly derived from the one-way causal relationship between agricultural research achievements and agricultural economy development; there is no relationship between agricultural research fiscal input and agricultural research achievements. Impulse response function and variance decomposition analysis shows that the financial input and agricultural research achievement has a long-term positive impact on agricultural economy. Agricultural research’s strongest influence on agricultural economy occurs in 3rd ～ 4th periods, the strongest impact of agricultural research achievements on agriculture economy appears in 2nd ～ 3rd periods; the financial input of agricultural research has limited contribution to agricultural economy. The relative variance contribution ratio of agricultural research financial input on agriculture economy is about 50%; the relative variance contribution ratio of agricultural research achievements on agriculture economy is about 46%.Thirdly, taking agricultural research institutes as an example, using the Bootstrap -DEA method, analyses the agricultural research dynamic performance from 1993 to 2010. Result shows that in the nearly 20 years agricultural research institutes’research performance is stable with slightly down, there was a "deep" falling from 1999 to 2002, but restored in 2003. It demonstrates that continuous agricultural research system reform injects new vitality for agricultural research system, keeps agricultural research investment performance from decreasing. However, strengthen and depth of reform is not enough, limits the improvement of the whole performance level. At the same time, agricultural scientific research system reform itself has short-term negatively impact on agricultural scientific research system.Fourthly, through discussing the relative performance of different agricultural research institutions, different provinces and regions, explains the effectiveness, rationality and fairness of agricultural research resources allocation. The results show that there is a big room to improve the provincial agricultural scientific research, compared to the production standards under current technical conditions, provincial agricultural research performance only reaches 71%～80%, the pure technical efficiency reaches 76%-79%, scale efficiency is up to 91～97%, the scale efficiency has a downward trend in recent years. Different provinces’performance is variance, but there is no province has a continuous excellent or very poor performance. Differences are caused mainly by pure technical efficiency relating to management and technology. The northeast and southwest performance is bigger; there’s certain decline in the east China; the north-China downturns from middle level to the worst. In recent years, the southwest scale efficiency is at a lower level. Therefore, it is not certain that developed or high invested area has higher performance; agricultural research investment in some areas is at the stage of diminishing marginal benefits under the existing management system.Fifthly, it empirically analyses the performance of agricultural research resources allocation, by estimating the relative performance of different agricultural universities. Firstly, it analyzes the difference of different agricultural university scientific research input and output in the aspect of different type, area and hierarchical. Based on Bootstrap-DEA method, evaluates the research performance of 43 agriculture universities. The results shows:great development occurs in agricultural universities research, but there’s significant difference of each universities. Generally, the pure technical efficiency is significantly much lower than the scale efficiency. There’s a big gap between 43 universities’pure technical efficiency, but no significant difference between different types; the scale efficiency of the eastern universities is significantly higher than the western; the technical efficiency and pure technical efficiency of "211 project" are significantly higher than the general; "985 project" has no obvious advantage although its inputs and outputs are highest. We can see that under the existing management system, agricultural research investment of universities is at the stage of diminishing marginal benefit, agricultural research resources allocation should be optimized.Last but not least, it discusses the impact factors of agricultural research investment performance from the perspective of science & technology policy, agricultural policy and agricultural research institutions. Science & technology and agriculture policy is the external macro-policy environment, while the agricultural research system is internal. It is found that agricultural research reform is keeping up with the pace of national science & technology reform of China, but does not reflect the special nature of agricultural research; reformation of science & technology system did not enhance agricultural research performance. Science & technology has not become the focus of agricultural policy. Lack of organic links between the middle and lower agricultural technology, lack of systems planning limits the effective of agricultural research. The unclear definition of agricultural research’s nature, insufficient investment, excessive competition and earmarks funding, all leads to an increase of non-research costs, offset value and profit-seeking behavior; The separation of agriculture, science and education, and the weaker control of the ministry of agriculture to the agricultural science and education results in disjointed between research and economy, affects the economic benefits of agricultural research; The lack of reasonable supervision and performance evaluation system can explain why agricultural research is out of the government and economic needs. For these reasons, it is necessary to distinguish its property, reform allocation system, innovate management mechanism, complete the assessment mechanism and breed market of achievements transformation, to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of agricultural research investment.