Governmental Spending on Public Cultural Services: Efficiency and Influencing Factors Analysis Based on DEA-Tobit

摘要

Based on the panel data of provinces in China from 2000 to 2015, this article explores the efficiency of local government spending on public cultural services and its influencing factors under the DEA-Tobit two-stage analysis framework. First, the comprehensive efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale technical efficiency of local government public cultural expenditure were measured through the data envelopment analysis method (DEA). On the basis of the first step analysis, we use Tobit model with the limited dependent variable to study the relationship between the efficiency evaluation results and policy variable such as fiscal decentralization, cultural policy, the relationship between the efficiency evaluation results and social factors like per capita GDP, population density and residents’ educational level etc. Through the analysis of the evaluation results, it is found that there were significant differences in the local efficiency on public cultural expenditure in China. The effects of population density, urbanization level, per capita GDP and illiteracy rate on the efficiency of government public cultural expenditure are positive. After controlling population, economic and social factors, the effect of fiscal decentralization on the efficiency of public cultural expenditure is negative, and cultural policy has significantly promoted the efficiency of Chinese local government cultural expenditure.