Research On The Impact Of Transfer Payments On The Accessibility Of Basic Public Services

The "14th Five-Year Plan" period has put forward higher requirements for promoting the construction of the basic public service system,and "accessibility" has become the target orientation and measurement standard for the structural reform of the supply side of basic public services.As an effective tool to coordinate the balance between government revenues and expenditures,the main purpose of transfer payments is to bridge the gap between local financial resources,motivate local governments to provide the public services needed by the public,and achieve the policy goal of convenient and accessible basic public services.By exploring the effect of the current central-territory transfer payment system on the accessibility of basic public services,this thesis not only enriches the relevant studies in the field of accessibility of basic public services,but also provides practical guidance for improving the accessibility of basic public services through improving the transfer payment system.Firstly,after reviewing the literature related to transfer payments and basic public services,this thesis summarizes the highlights and shortcomings of the existing literature.On the one hand,when analyzing the factors influencing the accessibility of basic public services,the thesis takes into account of local financial resources,which have been neglected in previous studies,and pays attention to the "disturbance effect" of local financial resources on the use of transfer funds by local governments.On the other hand,based on the theories of"Flypaper effect" and "Switchable hypothesis" of transfer payments,this thesis explores the overall mechanism of transfer payments affecting the accessibility of basic public services through mathematical derivation,and compares the effects of different types of transfer payments on the accessibility of different types of basic public services,and finally proposes three theoretical hypotheses to be tested.Secondly,this thesis defines the accessibility of basic public services from the perspective of "matching demand and supply",and constructs a demand function model of basic public services based on the median voter hypothesis,then estimates the demand function equations of basic public services through the seemingly uncorrelated regression(SUR),and finally subtracts the actual value of local government spending on basic public services from the fitted value of residents’ demand for basic public services to obtain the matching index of supply and demand for basic public services as a proxy indicator of accessibility of basic public services.After completing the above steps,the thesis founds that the accessibility of basic public services in China is generally on the rise from 2009 to 2019,and there are significant regional and service category differences in the accessibility of basic public services:the accessibility of basic public services in central and eastern regions is currently better than that in western regions,and the accessibility of production and livelihood services is better than that of human services.Thirdly,using panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2009 to 2019,this thesis constructs a panel threshold model to empirically test the effect of transfer payments on the accessibility of basic public services,using the local own financial resources indicator as the threshold variable to examine the differences in the effect of transfer payments on the accessibility of basic public services in regions with different levels of local own financial resources.The regression results show that transfer payments have a significant effect on the accessibility of basic public services,and the effect is better in areas with high levels of local own financial resources.In addition,the results of heterogeneity analysis show that there are differences in the effects of different types of transfer payments on the accessibility of basic public services,and the effects of transfer payments on the accessibility of different types of basic public services are different.Finally,combining the research conclusions and realistic national conditions in China,this thesis puts forward four feasible policy suggestions on how to improve the level of accessibility of basic public services in China,including ways to continue to improve the transfer payment system,optimize the internal structure of transfer payments,and strengthen the guidance and supervision of the use of transfer funds,as well as improve the level of local financial resources.