Research On The Measurement Of Local Fiscal Compulsory Expenditure And Its Influence On The Efficiency Of Public Expenditure

As the core content of the reform of financial management system,fiscal decentralization is of great significance in balancing inter-governmental financial relations,regulating government revenue and expenditure behavior and social and economic activities.The reform of China’s financial system has experienced the evolution from a high degree of fiscal centralization in the period of "unified revenue and expenditure" to "fiscal responsibility" and different degrees of decentralization in the period of tax distribution,and the intergovernmental financial power and administrative power have been further clearly defined.By giving local governments appropriate financial autonomy,it provides institutional support for optimizing the structure of government expenditure and improving the efficiency of the allocation of public resources.Taking the reform of the new budget law and abolishing the local fiscal compulsory expenditure standard as the policy background,this paper uses the provincial panel data from 2000 to 2016 to measure the implementation of the local compulsory expenditure standard and construct the index of fiscal expenditure autonomy on this basis.to study the impact of the expansion of local fiscal autonomy on the efficiency of public expenditure.First of all,the research and calculation results show that before the implementation of the new budget law,the implementation of statutory mandatory expenditure standards in various regions of China as a whole failed to meet the standards,and there were significant differences between regions.Specifically,in terms of the implementation of the relevant proportional expenditure standards,most parts of the country have basically failed to meet the statutory expenditure standards in the fields of education and science and technology over the years,while the implementation of expenditure standards in the field of health is better.In terms of the implementation of the relevant growth expenditure standards,in the fields of education and agriculture,all regions have been able to meet the statutory expenditure requirements over the years.In the field of science and technology,the implementation of expenditure standards is poor in most regions.Secondly,this paper constructs the autonomy index of local fiscal expenditure based on the compulsory expenditure standard,and uses the Tobit panel random effect model to study the effect of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of public expenditure measured by the autonomy of local fiscal expenditure.The empirical results show that during the sample period,the autonomy of local fiscal expenditure has a negative effect on the efficiency of public expenditure as a whole.Through the introduction of the quadratic term of the fiscal expenditure autonomy variable,it is found that the local fiscal expenditure autonomy has a "U" nonlinear effect on the efficiency of public expenditure,and the inflection point of the effect curve appears after the reform of the new budget law.The above results show that in the period of low autonomy of fiscal expenditure,its impact on the efficiency of public expenditure is negative,while the expansion of local fiscal expenditure autonomy brought about by the reform of the new budget law can effectively improve the efficiency of public expenditure.The analysis of the results shows that the optimization and adjustment of local financial capacity and political incentives is an important factor leading to the nonlinear effect of fiscal expenditure autonomy on the efficiency of public expenditure in different periods and at different levels.When exploring the mechanism that the standard of compulsory expenditure affects the efficiency of local public expenditure,it is found that compulsory expenditure affects the efficiency of public expenditure by affecting the level and structure of local fiscal expenditure.At the end of the paper,after testing the effect of the reform policy based on the new budget law and replacing the decentralized variables of fiscal expenditure,the conclusion of this paper is still valid.Finally,according to the research conclusion,this paper proposes that we should continue to appropriately expand the autonomy of local fiscal expenditure and further clarify the division of central and local expenditure responsibilities.policy suggestions to improve the responsibility of local fiscal expenditure,such as reforming the current performance appraisal system,establishing an effective incentive and restraint mechanism and improving the intergovernmental transfer payment system.