Study On The Efficiency Of Fiscal Expenditure For Agriculture

Agriculture occupies an important position in the economic development of a country, study on the effectiveness of fiscal agricultural supports, has been the academic focus of attention and the health and stable development of it is often related to economic development and social stability. But agriculture also has its own particularity, not only belongs to the weak industry but also lack of investment because of positive externalities, so the government should compensate for the lack of private investment and support the financial fund for agriculture and so on, in order to ensure the normal development of agriculture industry. For a long time, people generally think that the benefit of financial fund for agriculture is not high.The county covers almost all aspects of the national economy, having become the "cell" to support the entire national economy, playing a role in the regulation of economic development and social stability as the leading of the area and it is very important to the dominative area. The healthy operation of it is an important factor to complete economic goals. Study on the government affairs from the county level, becomes an important research content. In recent years, there is little quantitative analysis literature about changes and effects on the financial support for agriculture of the counties.This paper takes the efficiency of fiscal expenditure of agriculture in Songyang County as the research object, the research from the following several aspects:(1)Expound on the inevitable demand of agricultural support of the government from the theoretical level;(2) Collect the data of fiscal expenditure during1978-2011in Songyang County of total financial expenditure, fiscal expenditure of agricultural, agricultural GDP, etc. and analyze the absolute scale of agricultural expenditure and relative scale of county government in Songyang County;(3) Analyze the efficiency of fiscal expenditure for agriculture in Songyang County from the vertical and horizontal two aspects with the DEA method, According to the data of fiscal expenditure between1978-2011and part of the county (city) data of fiscal expenditure on agriculture of Zhejiang Province in2011;(4) Analyze the factors of the efficiency of financial expenditure from the positive and negative directions in Songyang County.Most previous studies of the efficiency of fiscal support for agriculture analyze from the macro level, this paper discussing it from the micro angle of county level. The conclusion of this paper is:(1) The fiscal expenditure for agriculture has a great role in promoting the development of agriculture, although in recent years, Songyang County in the fiscal expenditure growth, but the relative percentage is not high and the fluctuation is volatile.(2) In the time series of fiscal expenditure of Songyang County of comprehensive efficiency is low and most years is out of the production frontier. Comparing of the comprehensive efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency, we find that efficiency of fiscal expenditure is relatively low in Songyang County and the main factor is the scale efficiency is relatively low. The central and provincial governments should increase the investment of agriculture based on the limited funds of county’s finance; the central government should become the main input of agricultural research and agricultural technology investment and make a great effort on management of the fund for agriculture while increasing the fiscal agricultural expenditure because of the weakness in less developed regions.(3) The comprehensive efficiency of fiscal support for agriculture in some counties of Zhejiang Province (city), the comprehensive efficiency of Songyang County is relatively low, but the pure technical efficiency is in the middle or upper level. At the same time, with the compare of different regions, Songyang is in the stage of increasing returns to scale, the government should increase the input of agricultural expenditure.(4) Through the data from the DEA model, we found that:Firstly, it’s different from the usual impression that the technical efficiency of fiscal agriculture fund is not necessarily very low in less developed regions, even higher than some developed areas; Secondly, the conclusion of increasing or decreasing returns to scale by comparing with the previous years somewhere is likely be quite different when it is compared with other regions, therefore, the reference object being selected to form the final conclusion could be crucial.