The Administrative Costs Of Research

Administration cost is a concept integrated economics with administration science. Influenced by traditional ideas, researches on administration costs in our country are unsubstantial and phenomena without considering the costs in administrative activities often emerge. Since last century, reforms in administrative activities in western countries aiming at reducing administration costs have obtained series of achievements: playing down financial expenditure, improving administrative efficiency and strengthening government's authority. At the same time it increases the pressure of China government's participating in international competition. By present, our government has realized the necessity of reducing administration costs and taken it as the goal of China's administration reforms. The demands in practice make it increasingly important to carry out researches on administration costs. Based on the facts that researchers commonly regard administration costs as the economic costs consumed in the processes of administrative activities but neglecting the political costs in the process of administrative activities, and that under the influence of such a logic playing down administration costs in practice is just taken as reducing financial expenditure, the author argues that only under the guide of correct cost theories can the reforms to reduce administration costs make great achievements. Thus, the concept of cost in economics is introduced into the research on administration processes in the dissertation, which consists of four parts expounded both theoretically and experimentally.In Part One, the concept, category and characters of administration costs contrasted with economic costs are analyzed theoretically. According to the difference between the factors constituting administration costs, administration costs can be grouped as economic costs and political costs; according to the difference between the objects of administrative activities, administration costs can be grouped as internal administration costs and external administration costs. Internal administration costs should take efficiency as its accounting principle and external administration costs should take harmony and impartiality as its accounting principle.In Part Two, the factors that have influenced on administration costs areanalyzed. The main factors influencing on internal administration costs are the organizational dimensions of administrative system; the main factors influencing on external administration costs are the scopes of administrative capacity; the main factors influencing on both internal and external administration costs are the administrative power. As an objective but not inevitable existence — administration corruption now is the greatest cost in administrative activities, which has strong influence on both internal and external administration costs.In Part Three, considering the fact that the administration costs in our country still keep high and hard to decrease, the factors that have influence on internal, external and both internal and external administration costs are analyzed.In Part Four, using the experience in administration reforms from western countries for reference, a conception of constructing an abstemious and efficient government is brought forward from three aspects: decreasing the operation costs in administrative system, decreasing the external administration costs and increasing the corruption costs.