The Research On Environmental Effect Of Fiscal Expenditure In China

Environmental resources as the public good have many problems that the market itself cannot solve such as externality and property right insufficiency,which provides the basis and opportunities for the government to involve in the environmental issues.Fiscal policy is an important measure for the government to protect the environment.Fiscal expenditure as an indispensable adjustment means of fiscal policy plays a vital role in controlling environmental pollution and improving environmental quality.This paper defines the environmental effect of fiscal expenditure as the reflection and effect of the government's fiscal expenditure behavior on environmental pollution control and environmental quality improvement.Therefore,this paper studies the environmental effect of fiscal expenditure from the aspects of the effect of fiscal expenditure on environmental quality and the efficiency of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection.Firstly,this paper makes a study on the environmental problems from the economic perspectives such as externality theory,public good theory and property right theory,and analyzes the influences mechanism of fiscal expenditure on environmental quality.Secondly,this paper studies the effect of fiscal expenditure on environmental quality by using panel data and spatial measurement method.Finally,this paper use DEA-Tobit model to evaluate the efficiency and influencing factors of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection.The results suggest as follows:(1)Fiscal expenditure as an important financial means for the government to implement macroeconomic regulation and adjust economic structure can affect the environmental quality through two ways: The financial expenditure for environmental protection has a direct effect on environmental quality,and the other is the total financial expenditure has an indirect effect on environmental quality through impacting economic development.(2)The results of econometric analysis of the impact of fiscal expenditure on environmental quality show that,omitting the restrictions of spatial dependence of environmental quality gets a upward bias on the effect of fiscal expenditure on environmental quality.The regression coefficients of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection is significantly negative to wastewater discharge,sulfur dioxide emissions in the exhaust gas and general industrial solid waste emissions,which shows the direct impact of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection on environmental quality does exist.The increase of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection can reduce the discharge of environmental pollutants and improve the environmental quality.In the economic growth equation,the regression coefficient of the total financial expenditure of local government is significantly positive to the Regional Gross Domestic Product.At the same time,regardless of whether or not the spatial dependence of environmental quality is taken into account,the regression coefficients of the Regional Gross Domestic Product and its square are also significant to wastewater discharge,sulfur dioxide emissions in the exhaust gas and general industrial solid waste emissions,which indicates the indirect effect of the total financial expenditure on environmental quality through impacting economic development does exist and is highly relevant to the level of local economic development.(3)The results of the efficiency and influencing factors of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection show that the efficiencies of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection of the whole and every province are not completely effective and the efficiency level is not high.Fiscal expenditure for environmental protection of the whole and every province has not reached the optimal size and the majority show decreasing returns to scale.The efficiencies of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection in our country obviously represent regional difference.At the same time,the fiscal decentralization,the level of regional economic development,the degree of industrialization and the size of the population have a significantly negative impact to the efficiency of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection,and the education level of the population has a significantly positive effect to improve efficiency of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection.Based on the above research results,this paper puts forward some relevant suggestions on how to control environmental pollution and improve environmental quality from the aspects of fiscal expenditure such as the optimization of the structure of fiscal expenditure,the increase of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection,the allocation of fiscal expenditure and fiscal expenditure for environmental protection rationally,the analysis of the economic and social environment of the region in order to improve the efficiency of fiscal expenditure for environmental protection,the improvement of the local government's performance evaluation standards so as to correct the behavior of government's neglect of environmental protection and so on.