A Study On Government Audit, Information Disclosure And Governance Efficiency

On the12th National People’s Congress of17th March2013, comrade Xijin ping presented that we should insist on upholding the Party’s leadership, the people are masters of the country, ruling of the country by laws, adhering to the principal position of the people, expanding people’s democracy and promoting the rule of law......Building a service government, responsible government, law-based government and incorrupt government, fully arousing the enthusiasm of the people. Moreover, comrade hu jintao also claimed in the eighteent national congress of the communist party of China on8th November2012that establishing and perfecting the power supervision and restraint system, assuring people’s right to know, express, participate and supervise, which is the first guarantee to make sure use authority correctly. Promoting standardization and open of power operation, perfecting making the party affairs, judiciary, government affairs public and the public system in various fields......making people supervise authority so that power operate under sun. Government governance is a global issue. Transparency and openness of government working have increasingly become an important symbol of whether odern democracy and legal system sound and perfect, information disclosure become basic requirement of guaranteeing citizens’ knowing right and dominant direction of government regulatory reform. The quality of disclosure of the three official consumptions which is one important part of government will affect the efficiency of government governance. On17th March2013, comrade Li keqiang emphasized when he answered Chinese and foreign journalists after the National People’s Congress and the Chinese Political Consultative Conference that official receptions, official overseas trip, official vehicles, that are, the three official consumptions will decrease only not to increase. These fully embody that the Chinese government attaches great importance to strengthen the government information open and transparent and improve the quality of governance of the three official consumptions. The basic goal of government audit is to safeguard and promote the overall effective performance of public entrusted economic responsibility and it plays an important role in improving the efficiency of government governance. At present how to improve the quality of government information disclosure lack of both further research and scientific and effective empirical test from the point of government audit. This paper emphatically studies theoretical basis and path of action of improving quality of government information disclosure by government audit, empirically examines the influence of government audit over quality of government information disclosure and thus the economic results in government governance, presents to construct the audit monitoring system of government information disclosure in order to give fully play to government auditing through the governance of government information disclosure quality thereby achieving government governance’s high-effective goals of "good governance".Through the study of this article to achieve the followings:fisrstly, summarizing the development status of domestic and foreign government information disclosure through the analysis of the development of three official consumptions disclosure, especially investigating the current status of the three official consumptions for disclosure, in order to correctly understand China’s current actual situation of government information and three official consumptions disclosure, as well as the implementation effect disclosure policies, making an objective evaluation of the government management level and government information disclosure policies. Secondly, looking for the evidence of government auditing’s influence on the quality of government information disclosure. Under the traditional principal-agent theory, incentive and supervision are two ways to solve the agent problems, however, the government public sectors compared to the company organizations have their different particularity, and the role of incentives is limited by the inherent issues, the government audit is the better supervision means of effective solving the agency problems in public sectors, through the study of this article it can verify whether the government audit plays the role of the external supervision in the process of government information disclosure. Thirdly, exploring the governance path of government information disclosure by government audited. Government audit as an effective external supervision mechanism, has a certain control effect for all types of organizations, so, how does it play the governance role in government information disclosure? Exploring the governance path of government audit provides a good platform to government audit’s supervision and management functions. Fourthly, through the government audit’s governance effect to government information disclosure and the theoretical analysis and empirical test of the efficiency government governance influenced by government information disclosure, perfecting our country policy of government information disclosure and providing theoretical basis and empirical evidence of building effective audit monitoring system of government information disclosure.The main content of each chapter are as follows:Chapter1:Introduction, including research background and significance; definitions of the core concepts of government information, three official consumptions, government auditing and governance efficiency; research ideas and research methods; research framework and thesis innovation.Chapter2:Literature Review, mainly from such three aspects as the government audit and disclosure of government information, government audit governance functions, the government information disclosure and governance, summarizing the research literature home and abroad and giving relative comments.Chapter3:Analyzes the overview of the development of the government information disclosure from two aspects, on the one hand, take the United States, European Union countries and some Asian countries as examples, foreign government information disclosure process is analyzed; On the other hand, the process of China’s government information disclosure is analyzed from two aspects such as government information disclosure and "three official consumptions" exposure. Secondly, the information disclosed of central departments in2011and2012is analyzed to check out the quality of disclosure and explore the disclosure situation of "three official consumptions". Finally, the analysis of the problems of the disclosure of "three official consumptions" is made.Chapter4:Theoretical Analysis, including two aspects of theoretical analysis. First is the theoretical analysis of government auditing and government information disclosure:theoretical basis and path of the government auditing to enhance the quality of government information disclosure is analyzed from the perspectives of responsibility concept of trust economy, audit control concept and the auditing concept of "immune system", concluding that all of these three concepts demonstrate that a government audit has a significant impact on the quality of government information disclosure. But, with the change of governance environment, objectives, methods and procedures of the government audit should be adjusted accordingly to form the path of the comprehensive management of the government information disclosure. Second, the theoretical analysis of the government information disclosure and governance efficiency:the relationship between the government information disclosure and governance efficiency is analyzed from such theories as the principal-agent theory, the theory of signal transmission and new public management theory. Government audit is an effective means to ensure that government fully complies with its public fiduciary economic responsibility; signal transmission theory proves that government, through its own "internal" signal transmission pathway, can effectively reduce the agent problem caused by information dissymmetry; new public management theory treats citizens as customers, the government must first disclose the information held in order to achieve the target of citizens participating politics, government should manage the public affairs effectively to establish a government of serving people.Chapter5:It is to study the impact of government audit on government information disclosure quality, research shows that government audit can improve the quality of government information disclosure, the intervention of government audit is able to monitor and prompt the government to focus on efficiency during the use of public resources in the process of carrying out public management responsibilities. By using this external monitoring mechanism of government audit, the opportunistic behavior of government departments is effectively inhibited, the value content of the disclosure of government information is increased, the quality of information disclosure is improved in order to promote and guarantee the effective fulfillment of government trust economic responsibility. However, the audit of the government information disclosure is not included in the day-to-day work of the government audit, resulting in limited role of government auditing in enhancing the quality of government information disclosure.Chapter6:It is about the impact of government information disclosure on governance efficiency, studies show that the disclosure of government information plays a great role in promoting the efficiency of governance, the fuller, more complete, the higher the quality of disclosure of government information, the more it can strengthen citizens’right to get more information and participate in public affairs so as to urge the government to focus on effectiveness and efficiency in public management in the process of performing public administrative functions.Chapter7:According to the analytical results of functioning mechanism of government audit on improving government information disclosure quality, in order to better play the functions the government audit in improving the quality of government information disclosure, we should build an audit and control system of government information disclosure. The system should include government information quality standard system, the government information disclosure system, the audit method system of government information disclosure, of which the government information disclosure system should include the government budget reporting system, government financial accounting reporting system and "three official consumptions" reporting system; the audit method system of government information disclosure should include audit objectives, audit content, audit procedures and the audit report of government information disclosure.Chapter8:Summarizes, the main conclusions of the thesis, puts forward relevant suggestions, analyzes the limitations and clarifies the prospects of the future research.The main innovations are as follows:(1) A study on the relationship that government audit governance information disclosure to improve governance efficiency by an in-depth theoretical study and empirical analysis of exploratory system.The transparency and openness of government work is increasingly becoming an important sign of democracy and law of the modern state, the level of government information disclosure influences the citizens’ right of information acquisition and the effects of government regulation reform. From the current research literature, it is purely a blank that the relationship between government audit, information disclosure and governance efficiency. In this paper, theoretical study and Empirical Study of two models, in theory, an in-depth discussion on the relationship between the three; on the empirical to the "Three official consumptions" disclose the amount, description size and content of information on the accounts as a measure of the quality of government information disclosure, such as proxy indicators, from the perspective of information disclosure to exam the economic consequences of government auditing, and a complete research system is formed. (2) By using descriptive statistics, the disclosure of "three official consumptions" situation and problems is analysis fully and systematically.On one hand, the thesis reviews the development of domestic and foreign government information disclosure and focus on the disclosure process and development of China’s "three official consumptions" to provide information for future research. On the other hand, by using descriptive statistics, systematic analysis of the information disclosure of central departments "three official consumptions" in2011and2012is made from four aspects as the disclosure time, disclosure form, content and information content and existing problems of "three official consumptions" disclosure are analyzed.(3) The audit monitoring system of the disclosure of government information is established to effective solution the agency problem of government level.With the development of democratic politics and improvement of the social and economic level, international and domestic researchers and managers from all walks of life are fully aware of the importance of the disclosure of government information. Complete and full disclosure of government information helps to promote the government governance efficiency and to promote the establishment of democratic and transparent government. But little research in this area, particularly the function research of external supervision based on government audit has been made.In this thesis, publicly available data of "three official consumptions" is used as a proxy’ variable, the impact of government audit on government information disclosure is empirically tested. Conclusions show that, as an external monitoring system, the intervention of government audit is helpful to enhance the quality of government information disclosure. However, it is necessary to build a complete audit and control mechanism of government information disclosure to fully carry out the function of government audit on government information disclosure quality, thus achieving target of "good governance".