Factors Affecting The Expenditure Structure Of Local Government General Public Budgets

Currently we are in the critical phase of financial system reform,and whether the general public budget expenditure structure of local government accord with the requirement of public finance,are directly related to the course of the construction of public finance in our country and realization of the goal of promoting the equalization of basic public service.Analyzing of differences between the general public budget expenditure structure of local government,and understanding of local government spending preference have great significance on the financial system reform,as well as promoting equal basic public services.We review and comb the existing literature on the definition of local government expenditure structure,and combine the latest statistical caliber we can acquire,dividing the general public budget expenditure of local government into public investment expenditure and people's livelihood expenditure.Based on this classification,we first expound the current situations of the structure of fiscal expenditures of local government in China,and then adopt clustering analysis to classify the structure of local government's general public budget expenditure.The results show that there are obvious differences in different stages of economic development in terms of the structure of public budget expenditure,as well as the economic growth rate.Based on the analysis of the current situation,we discuss the causes for the differences of the general public budget expenditure structure of the local government from the theoretical perspective.Firstly,on the assumption the kindness bureaucratic organization and the same initial resource endowment,we analyze the decentralization of China and the incentive mechanism to local government officials,which result in fiscal competition and the yardstick competition,both them lead to the differences of the general public budget expenditure structure.In addition,after loosening the assumption,the theoretical analysis shows that the bias of local government expenditure structure still exists.Finally,using the panel data of 30 provinces in 1999-2016 building Spatial Durbin Model to carry on the empirical test,the results show that the fiscal decentralization,yardstick competition and the efforts of local government officials influence the structure of general public budget expenditure of local governments in different degrees.