A Study Of Efficiency Evaluation Of Shandong Province’s Fiscal Expenditure For Agriculture And Its Influential Factors

As a basic industry, agricultural development is not only related to the food security of a country, but also has a significant impact on the development of other domestic non-agricultural sectors of the economy. Therefore, the government must strongly support and protect agriculture. With the theoretical support of the theory of public goods, the theory of supply of agricultural, the theory of investment in agriculture, the theory of industrial development and the theory of government intervention, this paper mainly focuses on the analysis of the efficiency of the Shandong fiscal expenditure for the agriculture. Firstly, based on panel data of Shandong province, this paper comprehensively analyzes the current development projects in Shandong province fiscal expenditure, by using these several indicators: the total expenditure by financial support for agriculture, financial support strength for agriculture, fiscal expenditure growth rate, the geographical distribution of fiscal expenditure and fiscal expenditure structure; then this paper builds a DEA model to comprehensively evaluate the efficiency of agriculture expenditure of the overall Shandong and its 17 cities respectively; Then based on the facts of Shandong agricultural development, the Tobit Model is built to make a empirical research on the factors of fiscal expenditure efficiency in Shandong province. The results suggest as follows:(1) During 1994-2012 years, the level of technical efficiency of fiscal expenditure, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency in Shandong is not high. The average annual efficiency of fiscal expenditure fluctuates with modest amplitude. Maybe, this is because Shandong province increases its support for the agriculture, agricultural gradually matures and agricultural expenditure is in scale returns decreasing stage, which result in decreasing efficiency of fiscal expenditure. However, agriculture is still subject to the Shandong provincial government’s attention and support, so the magnitude of the average annual change in the financial expenditure efficiency is not great. It is also found that during 1994-2012 years, the average efficiency levels of northern Shandong, south of Shandong and west of Shandong area is higher than that of overall Shandong province; while the average efficiency level of coastal peninsula and the inland regions is lower than that of overall province.(2) It is also found that there are significant differences among fiscal expenditure technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency in Shandong province, and the efficiency of agricultural expenditure also shows a large change in the same years during different cities. Based on the average rank of fiscal expenditure efficiency in 17 cities of Shandong province from the year 1994 to 2012,it is found that the fiscal expenditure efficiency of cities with relatively developed economy ranks backward than the cities with relatively underdeveloped economy. For example: Jinan, Qingdao and other cities rank far behind cities like Heze and Liaocheng. This is mainly because the different cities emphasizes different agriculture policies. Some cities’ fiscal policies pay more attention to improving the quality of life of farmers, improving their living standards; while some cities focus on improving conditions for agricultural production and food production. Moreover, in cities with relatively economy, agricultural development is relatively mature and the situation that scale returns decreasing of agricultural development occurs, so there is a possibility that the efficiency of fiscal expenditure is lower than that of cities with relatively underdeveloped economy. All these could lead to the difference of fiscal expenditure efficiency.(3) During 1994-2012 years, the whole Shandong province and many cities among the 17 cities has been in the decreasing stage of returns to scale of financial expenditure for many years, indicating that the development of agriculture are into a relatively mature period: more agricultural investment support does not mean better effect of financial support for agriculture. Therefore, the status of returns scale decreasing are presented in the overall Shandong province and 17 cities, which is in line with the pace of development, the scale of development, the agricultural policy and the level of support for agricultural development in Shandong province.(4) The analysis of influencing factors of fiscal expenditure efficiency shows that the influencing factors of Shandong province fiscal expenditure efficiency have different degrees and have different effect in different directions, among which the level of economic development in rural areas of Shandong province, the urbanization rate, the total power of agricultural machinery and efficiency of agriculture expenditure show a negative correlation; the fertilizer use, the degree of financial self-sufficiency and efficiency of agriculture expenditure show a positive correlation.Based on the above findings, this paper makes some relevant suggestions from such view of points as the reasonable control of fiscal expenditure scale, the increase of financial support for agriculture fund management, the promotion of the construction of agricultural infrastructure as well as coordinated development of the urbanization and agricultural modernization.