Empirical Studies Of China Local Government's Openness

This paper Empirically Studies some aspects of China Local Government's Openness. Local Government's Openness is defined as evaluating the dimension under the background of economic globalization and information-based, local government sectors take advantage of many ways:such as Internet and information technique etc. terminally and irregularly of outward openness[This concept was introduced by McDermott's (2010) discourses on "open government "]. in empirical research, we use the data on e-Government of our prefecture-level city's government websites to be the Local Government's Openness's proxy variables,e-Government is defined as utilizing the internet and the World Wide Web for delivering government information and services to citizens.Our study has three research backgrounds:The first background is that economic globalization and information-based requires the government do better. Since Adam Smith considered the role of government in the economic development as the night watchman of economy of capitalism, As for the place of government sector stand in the market economy have been one of the topic that the economists dispute. Worship a nation to interfere economics'Keynesian school thought that the government should actively take part in business activities and devote major efforts to interfere economic development. however, as the development of market, this debate neglecting the positive change in the government sector, which is thought as the solutions and directions of reform of government sector for economic globalization and information-based. Economic globalization and information-based is a double-edged sword for government. on the one hand, they have a big shock on government management concept, require government take reforms to suit for market development, the government innovation in the government sector is representation of government reform; on the other hand, use information technology, the government Greatly have conduct and actions, such as e-government, The government gets to the Internet have already become flows, it can provide customers with public service conveniently, can also provide a guarantee for the development of market economy.Second, the new public management movement rises and to be a wave tide. New public management movement began in western counties from 70's in 20th century. Because of government interruption economies give rise to of government sector expansion and bureaucracy, and community & financial crisis. Some people thought that government need reform, represent person are Osborne & Gaebler (1992), B.Guy Peters(1996).they thought the direction of government reform are catalytic government; community-owned government; competitive government; a sense of government; particular about the effect of government; by the customer driven government:meeting the needs of customers, not the bureaucratic requirements; enterprising government; have predictable government; decentralized government:from hierarchy to participation and collaboration and market-oriented government.In Practice, there have been some reforms in the government sector, such as the British "next steps" program, the U.S. "reinventing government "movement, etc.These changes eased the conflicts between the government and the public, and promoted the harmonious development of society.Third, with the opening up policy, during the process of establishing market economic system, since 1979, our government had six large-scale practices of administrative reform in the administrative area. The core idea of these reforms is that gradually exclusion of bureaucratic thinking, enhances government efficiency, and provides services for the socialist market economy; China's economic miracle proved that the administrative system is conducive to economic development and social progress.In this paper, we take our local government departments as an example, the government proposed the concept of openness as a way to sum. up the local government sector in a positive change, the relevant research in this field fills the gaps of the literature.This paper defines the concept of openness of local government and analyses the difference and relationships between openness of local government and e-government, government innovation. On this basis, in order to empirical analysis the effect of openness of local government on economic development, we use the 2004 to 2009 of China's prefecture-level city government web sites e-government data to measure the openness of local government; at the same time, we use National Bureau of Statistics industrial enterprises database of all state-owned enterprises and non state-owned enterprises data to study the effects of the openness of local government on firm output and R&D. The main content and views are as follows:(1) At present, the development of e-government is imbalance. Use of e-government survey data, respectively analysis the development of e-government of China provincial, and municipal and county government websites and concluded that:overall, there is a huge difference in regional e-government development at this stage; on average, The characteristics of e-government in our prefecture-level city are that:information disclosure is relatively mature, online trading is still in its initial stage, the quality and efficiency of e-government and the needs of users varies significantly.(2) Analysis on regional imbalance of development of e-government. using of the data of prefecture-level city from 2004 to 2008 e-government, after empirical analysis of e-government development's effecting factors, we find that the psychological characteristics of e-government users, the security of e-government technology has contributed significantly to the development of e-government; openness of the city, city size and human capital, contributing to increasing the level of e-government development; the greater the proportion of government officials, the better the development of e-government; the more frequently changes in major government officials, the less favorable e-government affairs.(3) The effects of openness of local government on economic growth and government administrative costs. Take China's prefecture-level cities by 2004 to 2008 data as an example, our empirical results show that:Overall, after controlling for prefecture-level city of China's economic growth and government administrative costs of the remaining variables, the local government openness to promote economic growth, reducing the government's administrative costs. After according to the city where the geographical classification and regression, we find that for the cities of the eastern provinces, the degree of openness of the government have larger effect in promoting economic growth. Adding to lagged variables, the regression results show that the government openness on economic growth and administrative costs is a causal, namely:government openness promotes economic growth and reduce the government's administrative costs, and vice versa is not true.(4) Empirical analysis of government openness to foreign direct investment in the location selection. To China's prefecture-level city in 2008 as the research object, in the control of a number of foreign investment in the location selection of variables. The results show that the government openness to foreign direct investment level is an important reference when the firms make location selection. The more openness of a city government, the more attract foreign direct investment. Furthermore, after the analysis of samples were divided into eastern and western cities, we find that there is no significant effect for the degree of openness of the government to attract foreign direct, while for the central and western provinces cities, the government openness played a significant active role.(5) Analysis of the effect of local government openness on business performance. To use the data of 2004 to 2007 of industrial enterprises and the conclusions show that the local government openness to promote the total output of enterprises.(6) Empirical analysis of the effects of local government openness on firm R&D expenditures. By studying 2005 to 2007 China's industrial enterprises data, panel empirical logistic model results show that in the control of firms'size, government size and business operating cash flows and other variables, the government openness has a significant positive effect on R&D spending. Our innovation has the following two aspects.First, after reading a large number of literature and in the summary of findings based on the existing literature, for the positive changes in local government departments in recent years of China, local government openness is proposed,focusing on measures our government departments followed by trend of the times, using of information technology and the Internet and other means open to provide the public with services, our research is a positive and important contribution; Secondly, in the empirical parts, We first study factors that causing the development of e-government interregional imbalances, then we open this new perspective to reexamine the economic growth, foreign direct investment location selection and business development and other related issues, our studies for understanding these issues provide a reference and evidence.