Research On The Input Efficiency Of Provincial Public Capital In China

Since China's reform and opening up,especially from the Chinese government implemented expansionary fiscal policy to deal with Asian financial crisis in 1998,China had formulated the strategy of developing the western region,rejuvenating the old northeastern industrial base and rise of central region successively to harmoniza regional economic development.Then Chinese government adopted further positive fiscal policy to deal with international financial crisis in 2008 and launched the major initiative of “one belt and one road” to deepen reforms and open wider to the outside world in 2015.These policies had promoted China's public capital stock rise sharply by taking quickening infrastructure construction as a significant action.As the fiscal power and responsibility relationship of China's central and local governments had clarified,public investment of local governments has become an important part of national public investment.In this context,we are concerned with the variation trend,regional differences and influence factors of provincial public capital input efficiency in China.The answers to the above questions are very important in revealing the effect of China's local fiscal policy and formulating China's local public policy in future.Unquestionably,the accurate measurement of public capital is the key to evaluate input efficiency of public capital.For a long time,as different scholars have different concepts,statistical calibers and evaluation indexs on public capital estimation,combined with statistical calibers changing and capital related data missing,estimation results of China's public capital are large differences,which had posed a large problem for the research of economic growth theories.Reasonable definition and careful measurement of public capital stocks have become the extremely urgent problems to pave the way for follow-up studies.Therefore,based on systemic pectination on method,theory and practice of public capital at home and abroad,China's provincial public capital stocks and productive public capital stocks are carefully evaluated from 1985 to 2014 by using perpetual inventory method and age-efficiency patterns.Furthermore,combined with the triple decomposition framework of labor productivity by Kumar and Russell in 2002,China's provincial labor productivity of public sectors have been decomposed into technical efficiency,technological progress and public capital input efficiency based on the perspective of input and output performance.The variation trend,regional difference and influence factors of input efficiency of public capital are investigated from 1986.Compared with the existing literature,the innovation work and main conclusions of this paper mainly reflect the following aspects.Firstly,China's provincial public capital input has been estimated carefully.Based on a reasonable definition of the concept and statistic range of public capital,this paper has estimated China's provincial public capital stocks detailedly from 1985 to 2014 by using perpetual inventory method.For further investigation of the capital efficiency loss in the process of using,China's provincial productive public capital stocks have carefully evaluated based on age-efficiency patterns.Especially,considering the big effect on capital stocks calculation of depreciation rate,this paper doesn't use hypothetic depreciation rate and comprehensive depreciation rate simply,but infers the time series of depreciation rate based on asset value formula.Comparison with the public capital stocks,the results show that the productive public stocks can be better to reflect the input scale of public capital which has serviced in the production process since assets retirement and efficiency loss are taken into account.Overall,the growth rate of China's productive public capital stock was slow before 1993,after that the rate was increased dramatically.And the implementation of active fiscal policy at the times of financial crisis such as 1998 and 2009,has contributed further to the accumulation of public capital stocks.In addition,the productive public capital stocks present obvious ladder-like distribution from east to west.The public capital stock is largest in coastal regions and facing a serious shortage in northwest regions.Secondly,the variation trend and regional differences of input efficiency of public capital have been investigated deeply.Combined with the triple decomposition framework of labor productivity by Kumar and Russell in 2002,China's provincial labor productivity of public sectors have been decomposed into technical efficiency,technological progress and public capital input efficiency based on the perspective of input and output performance by using data envelopment analysis under hypothesis of variable return scale.This paper has discussed the dynamic changes of labor productivity of publc sectors and its decomposition.Especially,the variation trend and regional differences of input efficiency of public capital has been concerned importantly.The results show that the input efficiency of public capital increased dramatically after 1993 and became the first source of labor productivity growth over technological progress gradually.The declines of technical efficiency and technological progress had eventually caused declines in labor productivity of public sectors from the late 1990 s.Only relying on a significant investment of public capital cannot ensure a sustained growth of labor productivity of public sectors effectively.In addition,the cumulative growth of input efficiency of public capital in the middle of Yangtze River,southwest and the middle of Yellow River are fastest,north coasts,northeast,eastern coasts and southern coasts are next,the slowest is northwest.Moreover,the regional differences of input efficiency of public capital presented a divergent status sustainably from 1993.Thirdly,the influence factors of input efficiency of public capital have been empirically tested based on the perspective of fiscal decentralization.By establishing theoretical framework between fiscal decentralization and input efficiency of public capital,this paper has empirically analysed the effect of China's fiscal decentralization system,economic development,opening degree,foreign direct investment,government scale and education level on the growth of input efficiency of public capital.The analysis is based on panel threshold regression model from two respects which are fiscal revenue decentralization and fiscal expenditure decentralization.The results show that fiscal decentralization is dramatically associated with the growth of input efficiency of public capital whether using fiscal revenue decentralization or fiscal expenditure decentralization.Especially,the incentive function of fiscal revenue decentralization on the input efficiency of public capital is increased continuously while fiscal expenditure decentralization is decreased.In addition,there are strong negative correlations between per capita GDP,government scale and the input efficiency of public capital,while positive correlations between opening degrees,foreign direct investment,education level and the input efficiency of public capital.