Evaluation Of The Efficiency Of Basic Public Services’ Fiscal Expenditure Of Provincial Government In China

With the economic transition and social transformation in our country, people’slivelihood issues become the hot spot in the whole society. People’s demand for basicpublic services which are closely related to the livelihood increase constantly，putforward higher request for the government to strengthen and improve basic publicservices and urgent it be more positive in the basic public services of the livelihood.Finance is an important material foundation of the government to provide basic publicservices. China has entered a comprehensive and constructive era of public finance andpeople’s livelihood finance. At present, our country has gradually formed a relativelystable financial income growth mechanism, but the financial expenditure management isrelatively lag, the efficiency is not high and financial revenue and expenditurecontradiction is more and more highlighted. Since the reform of tax allocation, the financialautonomy of local governments in China has more and more big, possess more andmore the financial resources quantity and plays an increasingly important role inproviding basic public services and allocating public resources. In this background, ithas important theoretical and practical significance to evaluate and research theefficiency of fiscal expenditure of local government basic public services.The research object of this article is local fiscal expenditure of basic publicservices under the background of the government transformation. Based on the relatedresearch, it builds the basic public service expenditure efficiency evaluation indexsystem which is practical and feasible, uses non-parametric DEA empirical analysismethods, calculates relative efficiency scores of the local fiscal expenditure ofgovernment basic public services, determine the effect of fiscal expenditure of the basicpublic service and then clear the weak link in the field of basic public services. Theconclusion is as follows:①From2001to2010, the local governments’ comprehensive technical efficiencyand scale efficiency of fiscal expenditure exist significant difference. On the puretechnical efficiency scores, most of the local governments’ average efficiency score ishigher, and the gap between each other is not big.②In the central region, fiscal expenditure of local government basic publicservices of the comprehensive technical efficiency and scale efficiency is highest, thesecond is the western region, and the eastern region with developed economy is low. In terms of pure technical efficiency, local governments in the eastern region and centralregion get significantly higher score than that in the western region. Look from timedimension, three regional comprehensive technical efficiency and scale efficiency oflocal governments generally present the slow upward trend and the changes of puretechnical efficiency scores are a trend of fluctuations.③It measures the overall efficiency of local government level in our country byusing30local governments’ average. In ten years, the Basic public service efficiency offiscal expenditure is low and technical efficiency value compared to the scale efficiencyis closer to the efficiency frontier, to some extent, which illustrates the main reason ofthe low efficiency of fiscal expenditure is its existing scale can not achieve the optimalscale. Observation from the time dimension, Observation from the time dimension, thechanges of comprehensive technical efficiency and scale efficiency are similar andpresent slowly rising trends between the decades.Based on the above conclusion, this article puts forward some countermeasuresand Suggestions to further improve the efficiency of fiscal expenditure of localgovernment basic public services in China. Firstly, local governments should establishand perfect the public finance system, ensure that fiscal spending needed for basicpublic services and achieve effective public resources investment; secondly, they shoulddefine the basic public services governance and expenditure responsibility of the centraland local government respectively and be clear it gradually through the legal form;thirdly, Local governments should take many measures to improve the efficiency offiscal expenditure level according to own actual situations; fourthly, Local governmentsshould vigorously promote equal basic public services, focus on infrastructure,education, culture and medical and health service which are closely related to thelivelihood; fifthly, insist on financial management according to law, strengtheningsupervision mechanism of public finance; finally, they should establish and improve thegovernment performance, financial performance evaluation and valuation mechanism.