A Study On Fiscal Environmental Expenditure Efficiency And Influencing Factors

According to the report of the 19 th National Congress of the Communist Party of China,the principal social contradictions of China have been transformed into the contradiction between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever-growing need for a better life.However,some environment challenges,such as pollution,have been increasingly severe with the development of economics and civilization.In the Reform on the Governmental Incomes and Expenses,211 environmental protection expenditure subject has been set up to alleviate these problems,indicating that environmental protection has been one of daily expenditure responsibility of government.The main content of this study is divided into the following parts.Section 1 introduced the background,research purpose and significance,framework and methods,innovations and shortcomings of this study,and summarized and concluded the overall framework of this thesis.Section 2 reviewed domestic and foreign literatures and found that using DEA methods to measure the fiscal expenditure efficiency is one of a hot spot,but still leaving a gap in the research on the efficiency of specific fiscal expenditure,especially from the perspective of prefecture-level cities.Besides “three industrial waste discharge”,this study applied “the number of nature reserves” as another output indicator with the consideration of the data availability and completeness.Section 3 analyzed externality theory,public goods theory and inferred that environment protection,as a quasi-public goods,has positive externalities.If only provided by the market,it will cause the “tragedy of the commons”.Therefore,fiscal expenditure plays an important role in environment protection.Moreover,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between environment protection and economic development.When the economic development breaks through the “extreme value” point,it will positively impact environment protection.Section 4 analyzed current condition of Zhejiang’s fiscal environmental expenditure,indicating that it exists some severe problems,such as less environmental expenditure,slow growth of environmental expenditure,large gap of environmental expenditure in different prefecture-level cities,and severe environment pollution.Therefore,it is particularly important to improve fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency in Zhejiang province and promote the coordinated development of regional economy and environment.Section 5 measured the comprehensive technical efficiency,pure technical efficiency,and scale efficiency of Zhejiang’s fiscal environmental expenditure.It found that:(1)although environment protection has become a regular task of the Zhejiang province,most prefecture-level cannot reach efficiency front in fiscal environmental expenditure;(2)there is a large gap in fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency among all prefecture-level cities in Zhejiang,among which Zhoushan has a higher efficiency of fiscal environmental expenditure;(3)overall fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency in Zhejiang province shows a trend of first decline and then rise,indicating that the efficiency,structure and management level of fiscal expenditure has improved in recent years.Section 6 applied Tobit and Hierarchical clustering methods to analyze the effect of external factors,such as economic development level,industrial structure,regional population density,opening-up situation,education level of residents.It concluded that:(1)economic development level,industrial structure,regional population density has negative effect on fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency;(2)opening-up situation has positive effect on fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency;(3)but education level of residents does not significantly affect fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency.Besides,Hierarchical clustering methods have reached similar conclusions to some extent.Section 7 concluded that:(1)environmental protection has been incorporated into the routine task of the government;(2)fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency of Zhejiang enjoys a huge potential for development;(3)the coordination between economic development and environment protection in Zhejiang province needs to be improved;(4)external factors have significant influence on fiscal environmental expenditure efficiency of Zhejiang.As a result,it suggested that:(1)adjusting environmental expenditure and improving its efficiency;(2)optimizing the structure of fiscal environmental expenditure;(3)promoting government performance related to environment protection;(4)improving infrastructure;(5)expanding sources for environment protection funding.