Public Service Expenditures Research Articles

Impact of urban form on housing affordability stress in Chinese cities: Does public service efficiency matter?

Residential housing affordability stress is an important catalyst of class solidification and the growing worldwide social divide. Based on a quantitative spatial model that considers government utility and decision-making and uses nighttime lighting data, this study utilizes potential urban footprint as an instrumental variable to examine the mechanisms underlying the effects of the urban form on housing affordability stress and the moderating effect of government public service expenditure efficiency. The theoretical model and empirical results indicate the following. (i) The compact urban form increases housing affordability stress through productivity and urban living amenities. (ii) The efficiency of government public service expenditures affects industrial agglomeration externalities and public service accessibility, precipitating a negative moderating effect on the relationship between urban form and housing affordability stress. (iii) Based on LandScan data, a polycentric layout was found to weaken the compact urban form's ability to reduce housing affordability stress and reduce the government spending efficiency's negative moderating effect on public services. These findings demonstrate that the positive externalities of agglomeration production and the rationalization of government public service expenditures play important roles in housing market stabilization, which is helpful in facilitating better resource factor allocations by the government in the urban sprawl process.

Can local People's Congress supervision improve the expenditure behavior of local governments? Evidence from provincial budget review

The Local People's Congress budget review and supervision is an important measure to “effectively safeguard and improve people's livelihood” under the changes of the current major contradictions. Using the multi period DID method, we found that after the revision of the regulations, the local people's livelihood public service expenditure bias and expenditure efficiency were significantly improved. This conclusion is still valid after considering a series of robustness tests and possible explanations. The specific ways for it mainly include the constraint on the opportunistic behavior of local governments and the signal transmission function of the LPC's supervision. Further research shows that more effective media attention, more open and transparent rule of law environment, greater financial pressure and regional differences can all affect the effect of LPC's supervision of spending behavior. The research conclusion shows that the role of LPC supervision should be further played to ensure the development of local people's livelihood and promote the construction of government revenue and expenditure management system.

Does Increasing Public Service Expenditure Slow the Long-Term Economic Growth Rate?—Evidence from China

Economic downturns have increased in recent years, and the impact of COVID-19 has slowed economic growth. The market’s overall pessimism led to a contraction in the government’s fiscal revenue. The Chinese economy has always relied on government investments. Local governments’ productive investments have directly contributed to capital formation, which has promoted rapid economic growth. With the increase in expenditure pressure and the tightening of income caliber, will the continuous growth of the proportion of public service expenditure affect the established growth goals and hinder the efficiency of economic growth? This study explains this based on a general equilibrium model containing two types of government expenditure and uses China’s 2010–2019 provincial panel data for the empirical analysis. The results show that, in the current economic situation, increasing the proportion of public service expenditure is conducive to further economic growth.

PENERAPAN METODE STRUCTURAL EQUATION MODELLING-PARTIAL LEAST SQUARES (SEM-PLS) DALAM MENGEVALUASI FAKTOR-FAKTOR YANG MEMPENGARUHI PDRB DI INDONESIA

Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) is a multivariate statistical analysis method that combines regression analysis with factor analysis. SEM can be used to describe simultaneous linear relationships between observed variables (indicators) and variables that cannot be directly measured (latent variables). In the development of covariance-based SEM, there are still weaknesses based on parametric assumptions that must be met in regression analysis, and one of the classic assumptions that must be met is the assumption that the data is normally distributed. Partial Least Square (PLS) is one solution or alternative method of model estimation to manage SEM modeling with reflective or formative indicators. PLS was created to overcome the limitations of the SEM method. Structural Equation Modeling-Partial Least Square (SEM-PLS) is a powerful analysis method because it allows structural equation modeling with the assumption that the data used does not have to be normally distributed, SEM-PLS can use a relatively small sample size, and the indicators used are reflective, formative, or a combination of both. This study aims to determine the effect of latent variable indicators, namely public service expenditure, economy, health, and education on the Gross Regional Domestic Product (GRDP) in each district/city in South Sulawesi Province in 2022. The indicators used for each latent variable are Public services (employee expenditure, goods and services expenditure, capital expenditure, other expenditure), Economy (goods and services expenditure, capital expenditure), Health (employee expenditure, goods and services expenditure, capital expenditure), Education (employee expenditure, goods and services expenditure, capital expenditure, other expenditure). The results of the study show that the other expenditure indicator on the latent variable of public services and the other expenditure indicator on the latent variable of Education are excluded in the study because they do not pass the loading factor test. The model equation obtained is GRDP = 0.052 Economy - 0.087 Health + 0.321 Education + 0.706 Public Services. The R2 value obtained from the model equation is 0.982, which means that the latent variables of public service expenditure, economy, health, and education can explain the latent variable of GRDP by 98.2%. The latent variables that significantly influence the model equation are public service expenditure and education.

Vertical Fiscal Imbalance and Public Service Expenditure: Effects on Economic Growth Before and During Covid-19 Pandemic

Since 2020, Indonesia has been facing the Covid-19 pandemic for 2 years. Many impacts caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, especially on the economy, have led to a recession. Regional revenues are disrupted during a recession so local governments depend on central government transfer funds. From these issues, researchers suspect that there was a change in the decentralization conditions in East Java province during the Covid-19 pandemic as it was the province with the second largest GDP and has also experienced the greatest impact in Indonesia. This research method uses multiple linear regression with cross-sectional data from 38 district/city data units in East Java province. The results of this study are that the Decentralization Fund, Civil Service Capital Expenditure and the Human Development Index did not change before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. While the vertical fiscal imbalance has a positive influence on economic growth before the Covid-19 pandemic, the vertical fiscal imbalance has no influence on economic growth. This shows that there is another shift in priority in the use of central government finances, as state money is refocused and reallocated to deal with Covid-19. This makes development programs in other health sectors postponed.

Promotion Incentive, Population Mobility and Public Service Expenditure

Improving the level of public service expenditure is the basic condition to meet people’s growing yearning for a better life in a new era. This study aims to examine the influence of promotion incentive and population mobility on public service expenditure. With the panel data of 30 provinces (excluding Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan) in China from 2010 to 2018, a fixed effect model was employed to conduct the empirical research first, and then analyze the heterogeneity of the impact. In addition, the robustness was examined by substituting core explanatory variables and explained variables and using the spatial econometric model. Results indicated that promotion incentive and population mobility had significant negative effects on public service expenditure (medical care, education, culture, sports and media, social security and employment). By replacing the explained variables and the core explanatory variables and using the spatial economic model, the research conclusion was still stable and reliable. In different regions, promotion incentive and population mobility had different effects on different types of public service expenditure. In addition, it was revealed that the improvement of the urbanization level, economic development level, population density, residents’ education level and the proportion of tertiary industry had a significant positive impact on public service expenditure. The findings in this study can provide useful references for policy makers to allocate public service expenditure.

Effects of Employment Training Program on the well-being of the disabled persons-Evidence from China

Increasing the employment opportunities and income for the disabled persons are both important to safeguard the economic and social rights of this vulnerable groups, and to build an inclusive society. The goals are challenging to achieve because of: 1) the mismatch between economic structure and the education and training system for the disabled persons; 2) incoherent designing and ineffective implementation of various welfare programs for the disabled persons (赖德胜等 2008); 3) discriminatory attitude and practices by employers; 5) ineffective design and delivery of employment training programs (England 2003; Kulkami and Kote 2013).
 Investigating the effects of government employment training programs enables us to identify the factors that contribute to the increase of the disabled persons’ income, and to provide evidence for policymakers to improve the training programs in order to realize the aforementioned goals.
 The study is based on a large size sample questionnaire survey conducted in June-October 2018. The questionnaire is disseminated through an online website to the disabled persons’ mobile app Wechat. The respondents are located in 31 provincial administrative areas, and received 11296 responses. The questionnaire collects information about the characteristics of employment training programs delivered by the agencies, the respondents’ employment training experiences and training needs, their attitude towards the content, facilities and effects of the programs, the status of their employment, and their personal characteristics such as age, gender, education, income level, household registration status, and types and degree of disability. We also collect statistics that reflect the differences in terms of economic development and public service expenditure across provinces and regions. We use the linear regression model to test the effects of all these factors on the capability of the respondents to use the skills learned from the training programs to increase their income. The study concludes that the respondents are more likely to increase their income through training programs when the training content fits their jobs more, when they aim to develop interests and hobbies through training, and when they are more masterful of the training content. Different from many studies on the effect of performance management on job training performance, the findings suggest that responsive design and effective performance management of the training programs matter for positive program performance (Gerrish 2016). The study will also link with and contribute to the literature on social equity and employment policy for disabled persons that are rarely researched in public administration (e.g. Lindsay, Adams, McDougall and Sanford 2012; Gooden 2015).

The National Strategies for and Challenges in Infection Prevention and Control of the Healthcare System in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Review Study).

Healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) lead to considerable morbidity. Prolonged hospital HAIs, also known as hospital infections or nosocomial infections, refer to infectious diseases that occur within 48 h of hospital admission, within three days of discharge or 30 days after having received healthcare. A total of 39 government-owned hospitals with a total of 10,822 beds providing the majority (59.9%) of Saudi Arabian healthcare were analyzed. Medicare and Medicaid use hospital data to track hospital performance on matters pertaining to IPC. In addition, many hospitals have limited capacity with which to develop the core components required to build an effective IPC programme. Hajj has been associated with the increased prevalence and spread of infectious diseases. These factors include changes in human demographics and behaviour, the effect of new technologies and industries, an increase in international travel and commerce, and breakdown resulting from public health measures. Overall public health service expenditure originates from the administration and services that are provided free of charge to all Saudi citizens.

Rural Tourism Public Service Performance Evaluation Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process

In recent years, more and more attention has been paid to the construction of rural tourism, and tourists’ demand for rural tourism public services has become stronger and stronger. Through the objective and fair evaluation of rural tourism public service performance, on the one hand, it is helpful to improve the overall satisfaction of tourists to rural tourism. On the other hand, it can also ensure the efficiency of public service financial investment and expenditure. Firstly, on the basis of theoretical summary and hierarchical analysis, this paper constructs the performance evaluation index system of rural tourism public service from five aspects of infrastructure services, public transport services, public information services, security services, and public environmental services. Then taking China as an example, the performance of rural tourism public service is evaluated by analytic hierarchy process. The results show that the construction of hard environment such as public transport services, security services, and infrastructure services is a key factor in the construction of rural tourism public services. Finally, according to the evaluation results obtained in this paper, some suggestions are put forward for the development of rural tourism and the improvement of public service quality in the future.

A Difference-in-Difference Analysis of Shifts in Postsecondary Institution Spending Patterns in Response to “Promise” Financial Aid Programs

Using a panel dataset from 2000 to 2014, this paper employs a difference-in-difference design to consider the impact of the introduction of a “promise program” on postsecondary institutions’ internal spending levels and patterns. We find that promise programs influence postsecondary institutional behavior in every area we tested: student-related and non-student-related expenditure levels and shares. We find decreases in student-related expenditure areas at 2-year institutions, but no significant change at 4-years. Non-student-related expenditures are mixed at 2-years with levels of expenditures increasing for auxiliary but decreasing in public service areas. By contrast public service expenditures increase at 4-years. Shares of expenses also shift with declining spending on student services but increased institutional support at 2-years. However, there are no changes to the share of expenses at 4-years. Overall, we find that 2- and 4-year institutions react differently to the introduction of a promise program, with the greatest impact at 2-years. JEL Classifications: I22, I23

Համայնքների խոշորացման ազդեցությունը ՏԻՄ լիազորությունների արդյունավետ իրականացման համատեքստում (Ջերմուկ խոշորացված համայնքի օրինակով)/Impact of Community Amalgamation in the Context of Effective Implementation of Local Government Powers (Example of Jermuk Amalgamated Community)

The processes of administrative-territorial reforms taking place in the Republic of Armenia in recent years, in particular, the process of community amalgamation, have created new opportunities for the viability boost of communities, resulting in a positive scale effect. A significant increase in public service expenditure has been observed in small communities that are part of an amalgamated community. Expenditures on education, housing construction, utilities, transportation, garbage collection, culture, and social security have increased significantly. At the same time, the expenditure ratios in large communities have remained almost unchanged. There are several reasons for this problem, including the implementation of the powers defined by law, their significant inconsistency with the community budget, inexplicit legislative definitions of the powers, and the absence of an evaluation system for their implementation. In such circumstances, there is a need to evaluate the impact of community amalgamation on the implementation power defined by law. Even with the fact that more than half of the community budget revenue is from the state budget, the communities in the pre-amalgamation and post-amalgamation periods continued to implement a limited number of powers and act as the minimum community service provider. The Law on local self-government defines the scope of mandatory issues that apply equally to all communities, which, of course, requires the definition of these powers by specifying the concepts in the law, introducing an evaluation system for the implementation of these powers without ignoring the sectoral characteristics and the potential of the communities

Fiscal Pressure and Local Government Public Service Expenditure Bias: A Quasi-Natural Experimental Analysis Based on China's Large-Scale Tax Reduction

Fiscal Pressure and Local Government Public Service Expenditure Bias: A Quasi-Natural Experimental Analysis Based on China's Large-Scale Tax Reduction

Does Fiscal Expenditure Promote the Upgrading of Regional Manufacturing Industry? Empirical Test Based on the Dual Perspective of Infrastructure and Basic Public Services

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee set the tone that China’s manufacturing industry should upgrade to advanced, intelligent and high quality. In the traditional theory of industrial structure upgrading, fiscal expenditure is not the main influencing factor. In the new pattern of “dual circulation” development of Chinese economy, the important role of government in economic development should not be ignored in the study of the high-end upgrading of manufacturing industry. Using the panel data of 28 provinces in China from 2008 to 2016, this paper deeply studies the economic effect of the most important expenditure on basic public services and infrastructure on the upgrading of manufacturing industry, as well as the regional heterogeneity and the nonlinear characteristics of the technological progress stage. It is found that the economic effect of general budget expenditure and basic public service expenditure on the high-end upgrading of manufacturing structure shows the characteristics of strong heterogeneity and marginal decline, which mainly comes from the promotion effect of the two types of fiscal expenditure in the eastern region and the hindrance effect in the central and western regions. Especially in the five western provinces where industrialization is slow and heavily dependent on transfer payments, infrastructure expenditure and basic public service expenditure show negative economic effects around 2010, but this does not completely mean the failure of the policy effect of local governments. Poverty reduction and poverty alleviation in such underdeveloped areas often rely more on the development of labor-intensive manufacturing industry. With the improvement of the level of innovative technological progress, the role of basic public service expenditure in promoting the upgrading of manufacturing industry will be gradually strengthened. This paper holds that under the new pattern, the eastern provinces should increase investment in information infrastructure, promote the reform of affordable housing, and release the restrictions on both the household registration of high-skilled talents and the school district of children’s basic education. The central provinces should give further play to the role of the market in allocating resources, and focus on improving the quality of public services such as education and medical treatment to the eastern region, so as to better undertake the transfer of high-skilled talents and manufacturing industry in the eastern region. For special provinces with slow industrialization and mainly relying on central transfer payments, we can appropriately increase the proportion of special transfer payments, strengthen the guidance of subsidies and financial policies on social capital, and stimulate the vitality of market players. Under the background of “tax cut and fee reduction”, this paper provides empirical evidence for the improvement of government fiscal expenditure efficiency, the regional policy design of the upgrading of manufacturing industry, and the optimization of fiscal expenditure structure.

Influencing Factors of Social Service Satisfaction of the Elderly under the Background of Internet Attention

Improving the life service for the elderly is a topic of great concern to the government and society. This paper explores the influence of net attention on social work service satisfaction of the elderly. This paper studies and analyzes the current situation of the elderly’s net attention and social satisfaction, constructs the index system of social service satisfaction through the sample data of 17 districts and counties in A province, and establishes a multilayer linear model to analyze the influencing factors of social service satisfaction, and empirically analyzes the feasibility of the proposed model’s rationality and effectiveness. The structure shows that the scores of elderly people’s satisfaction with public services in all regions of A province are higher than 60 points, and the biggest difference of standard deviation of each region is 3.91 points. Public service expenditure has a negative effect on social service satisfaction, but population density, geographical location, and per capita GDP have no obvious effect. The regression coefficient of public service expenditure is -0.099134, which can reduce the score of social service satisfaction. Elderly participation in public welfare activities, elderly awareness of government, and elderly participation in government can improve the social service satisfaction score.

Formal and Informal Care: Complementary or Substitutes in Care for Elderly People? Empirical Evidence From China

To integrate the care resources of the elderly, while promoting the development of formal social care resources, some countries have gradually turned to the development of family informal care resources. In China, informal family care has a more important role, whereas social formal care resources are far from meeting the needs of older people. Thus, this strategy can only be effective if there is a clear complementary relationship between informal care and formal care. Empirical analysis is selected from the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) database, which conducted 10 follow-up surveys in 12 provinces and municipalities in China. A two-tier stochastic frontier (TSFA) model was used to analyze the relationship between three different kinds of formal care and informal family care. The formal complementary and substitute effects on informal care eventually led to higher actual informal care level. The net effect of formal care on informal care is positive, and the complementary effects of formal care are still dominant even in different regions. Increasing informal care does not crowd out or reduce formal care; thereby, facilitating the return of care to families can effectively reduce public service expenditures.

Uma visão geral de um paí­s em desenvolvimento sobre homens ví­timas de violência fí­sica e sexual

Objetivo: Analisar os dados de vitimização de homens, com idade entre 20 e 59 anos, pelas distintas formas de violência fí­sica e sexual, registrados no Sistema de Vigilância de Violências e Acidentes/SIVVA da cidade de São Paulo (SP). Método: Trata-se de um estudo transversal, de abordagem quantitativa, descritivo, retrospectivo. Realizado por meio das notificações do Sistema de Informação para a Vigilância de Violência e Acidentes (SIVVA) da Secretaria Municipal de Saúde da cidade de São Paulo, no perí­odo de janeiro a dezembro de 2014 na cidade de São Paulo, sendo composto por 6658 homens na faixa etária entre 20 a 59 anos. Resultados: O número de casos de violência fí­sica foram 6.624 casos e violência sexual 34 casos contra homens com idade entre 20 e 59 anos. O ví­nculo do agressor em relação a ví­tima era familiar ou conhecido da ví­tima; 61,8% violência sexual e 42,8% violência fí­sica. Conclusão: O estudo evidenciou que as ví­timas eram predominantemente adultos jovens. A violência na maioria dos estudos é vista como um grande problema social que atinge toda a sociedade, sendo responsável pelo adoecimento e mortes causadas por ações realizadas por indiví­duos ou, provocando danos fí­sicos, emocionais as ví­timas; além de gerar despesas para os serviços público.

Analysis of Management Transfer Funds in Katingan District

Renewal of the government system into regional autonomy has a major impact on the administration of the government system and the scope of performance in the government in Katingan Regency. The Transfer Fund is intended to assist the region in funding the authority to provide services to the public and reduce the imbalance of government funding sources between the center and the regions, as well as to reduce the gap in government funding between regions. The purpose of this study was to determine the role of Central Government transfer funds on capital expenditure for public services in Katingan Regency and analyze the management of transfer funds and their contribution to capital expenditure. The research is descriptive in order to explain how the Transfer Fund is managed by the Regional Financial and Asset Management Agency of Katingan Regency. The results showed that the regional revenue of Katingan Regency originated from Regional Original Revenue (Pendapatan Asli Daerah or PAD), receipts from transfer funds, and other legitimate receipts. Receipt of transfer funds increases from year to year. The average transfer fund allocation that is intended for public services is increasing especially in the fields of health, sanitation infrastructure, markets, agriculture, road infrastructure, environment, assistance for Early Childhood Basic Education (Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini or PAUD), health operational assistance, small and medium scale industries and the allocation of village funds also increased.
 Keywords: regional revenue, local revenue, transfer funds, public services.

Analisis Pendapatan Asli Daerah dan Pengaruhnya Terhadap Belanja Daerah di Provinsi Jambi

Local Own Revenue (PAD) is an important source for the formation of regional finances to be allocated for regional expenditure. This study aims to analyze the potential sources of regional own-source revenues and their effects on capital expenditure in Jambi Province. This research was conducted in Jambi Province. The data used in the form of secondary data in the period 2010 – 2018. The research method uses descriptive and quantitative methods. The analytical tool used in this study is a simple linear regression analysis and hypothesis testing with t test. The results showed that the potential source of PAD came from local taxes, which provided the largest contribution in realizing PAD, while the smallest contribution was regional retribution. Empirically, the original regional income has a significant influence on regional expenditure, meaning that the higher the PAD income, the higher the regional expenditure for regional development activities and public services.

Research on Fiscal Expenditure Structure and High-Quality Economic Development: An Empirical Study Based on Panel Data from Chinese Provinces from 2007 to 2017

This paper quantitatively measures the quality of economic development in 30 provinces in China from 2007 to 2017 by constructing a quality of economic development comprehensive evaluation index system. Based on this, a systematic GMM empirical analysis model is used to examine the effect of fiscal expenditure structure on the quality of economic development. The research results show that, at the macro level, all types of fiscal expenditures have a positive effect on the quality of economic development, and they are ranked from large to small in terms of environmental protection expenditures, social security and employment expenditures, science, education, cultural and health expenditures, economic construction expenditures, general public service expenditure. At the meso level, science, education, cultural and health expenditures, social security and employment expenditures, and economic construction expenditures in the eastern, central, and western regions all have a positive impact on the quality of economic development. There is obvious regional heterogeneity in the impact of general public service expenditure and environmental protection expenditure on the quality of economic development. Suggestions are put forward to optimize the structure of China’s fiscal expenditure to enable high-quality economic development.

Does Public Debt Service Expenditure Crowd-Out Economic Growth? Empirical Evidence from an African Developing Country

Abstract This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the impact of public debt service on economic growth; and it provides an evidence-based approach to public policy formulation in Zimbabwe. The empirical analysis was performed by applying the autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) technique to annual time-series data from 1970 to 2017. The study findings reveal that the impact of public debt service on economic growth in Zimbabwe is negative in the short run but positive in the long run. The results are suggestive of the existence of a crowding-out effect of public debt service in Zimbabwe in the short run and a crowding-in effect in the long run. In view of these findings, the government should consider fiscal and financial policies that promote a constant supply of long-term finance, long-term fixed investments, and extension of a government securities maturity structure so as to ensure sustainable short- and long-term public debt service expenditures. The study further recommends the strengthening of non-distortionary revenue mobilisation reforms to reduce market distortions and boost domestic investment.