Mechanism Analysis And Empirical Test Of Performance Audit To Improve Local Fiscal Expenditure Efficiency

At present,due to the comprehensive impact of the slowing domestic economic growth and the continuing spread of the global COVID-19 epidemic,China’s fiscal situation is grim,with slow growth of fiscal revenue,rapid growth of fiscal expenditure,increasing pressure on local finance,rising debt risks,and greater risks and challenges to the sustainability of local finance.Improving the efficiency of fiscal expenditure has become a practical requirement to resolve the risk of local fiscal expenditure.Performance audit,as a special auditing supervision method and performance management tool,focuses on monitoring and evaluating whether fiscal expenditure meets the goals of economy,efficiency and effect,effectively guides government departments to attach importance to fiscal expenditure performance,efficiently use and allocate financial resources,and improve the efficiency of local fiscal expenditure.At the same time,performance audit focuses on the work performance of the budget department,effectively overcoming the problem of soft budget constraints of the government,prompting the budget management department to reduce budget deviations and improve the level of budget management.The higher the level of local government budget management,the more scientific the budget evaluation system,the more effective the allocation and use of financial funds,and the higher the efficiency of local financial expenditure.Therefore,this thesis focuses on performance audit and local fiscal expenditure efficiency,analyzes and tests whether performance audit can improve local fiscal expenditure efficiency,and whether budget management level plays an intermediary role.This thesis uses the data of 30 provinces,autonomous regions and municipalities in China(excluding Tibet and Taiwan)from 2007 to 2018 as a sample.Firstly,the Malmqiust model is used to measure the fiscal expenditure efficiency of each local government,and then empirentially tests the impact of performance audit on the fiscal expenditure efficiency of local governments.The results show that:(1)performance audit significantly improves the efficiency of local fiscal expenditure;(2)The level of budget management plays a part of mediating effect in the improvement of local fiscal expenditure efficiency by performance audit;(3)Heterogeneity test shows that performance audit plays a stronger role in improving the efficiency of local fiscal expenditure in inland areas than in coastal areas;(4)The moderating effect test shows that institutional environment and public supervision have a positive moderating effect on performance audit to improve the efficiency of local fiscal expenditure.Therefore,this thesis suggests that government departments should further improve the performance audit system,improve the level of budget management,optimize the regional institutional environment,and promote social and public supervision to comprehensively improve the efficiency of local financial expenditure.