Study On Efficiency Of Providing Local Public Goods Based On DEA-Tobit

Providing public goods and services to residents is a basic function of the governments.While the social demand is infinite relative to the limited resources.With expenditure of local public finance growth,the costs of supplying public goods is rising sharply year by year.However,the aspects of quantity and quality don’t present the same proportion.Under the circumstances,improving the efficiency of local public goods is a realistic choice.At present,the inefficiency of local public goods exists generally in each province.Evaluating the efficiency of local public goods,exploring the impact factors,finding the roots of problem,optimizing the allocation of social resources are important to be solved.According to 2008-2013 panel data of 27 provinces,this study analyzes comprehensively the efficiency of local public goods in China and the impact factors of the efficiency through two phase methods of DEA-Tobit.Firstly,the study elaborates the present situation of local public goods and points out the characteristics of local public goods that include almost monopoly of government,regional differences,poor supply and fail express of people.Secondly,this study selects basic educations,infrastructures,social securities and health care as research object of local public goods.According to the principle of variable selection,the study screens per capita fiscal expenditure on education,per capita fiscal expenditure on agriculture and forestry,per capita fiscal expenditure on transport,per capita fiscal expenditure on social security and employment,per capita fiscal expenditure on health care as input variables.The number of full-time teachers,per capita water supply,passenger capacity,the rate of unemployment insurance and medical insurance,health technicians of per one thousand people are output variables.In the above basis,this study evaluates pure technical efficiency,scale technical efficiency and comprehensive efficiency of27 provinces through DEA.In order to improve the efficiency of providing local public goods and realize the allocation of public resources rationally,the study assumes that the level of urbanization,per capita GDP,the level of opening the outside world and education level could affect the efficiency of providing local public goods and sets them as explanatory variables.On the other hand,the comprehensive efficiency is set as explained variables.The results show that per capita GDP,and education level are keypoints to the differences of comprehensive efficiency by using Tobit.Finally,this study bases on empirical results of DEA-Tobit and international experience and puts forward some suggestions that include perfecting internal control constructions,increasing the level of opening the outside world,reducing interventions of allocating public resources of government,raising the level of education.