The Uniqueness of Government Efficiency and Indicator Selection
for its Measurement
Prof. Tang Renwu
Dr. Wang Hongxin
Dr. Guo Jia
Academy of Government, Beijing Normal University
Room 501, B Zone, Main Building
No. 19 Xinjiekouwai Street, Haidian District, Beijing, P.R.China
guo925@gmail.com
Prepared for delivery at the 2012 KAPA conference, June 26-30
Please Do Not quote or circulate this paper without authors’ consent
*The authors would like to thank Mr. Zhou Zheng at Beijing Normal
University for his assistance.
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The Uniqueness of Government Efficiency and Indicator Selection
for its Measurement
TANG Ren-wu , WANG Hong-xin, GUO Jia
(Academy of government, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, China)
Abstract: Government efficiency, has its uniqueness, and is measured by IMD, which is a
leading academic institute to study it in the world according to the competitiveness of a nation or
region. The principles of the measurement applied by IMD, and the actual situation of government
and statistics in China will be the reference for the paper to put forward 47 indexes to measure the
provincial government efficiency by assessing how well the government scale , the public services
and goods , and national welfare are in the governments including all the provinces , autonomous
regions and municipalities directly under the central government in China.
Keywords: government efficiency; national competitiveness; measuring Indexes to
government efficiency
In the market economy, as a kind of resource distribution mechanism, the
government can improve the efficiency of resource allocation, boost social equity and
economic sustainable development by providing public goods, administrating public
affairs, eliminating or decreasing market failure and settling external effects.
Whether the governments act as a role of the allocation of resources or not
depends on the operation of government efficiency. In the increasingly competitive
situation all over the world，only the effective government can provide a perfect legal
system, scientific decision, high-quality service, appropriate management, and
well-developed education, to promote enterprise development and economic growth.
Government efficiency is closely related with enterprise efficiency and the
rejuvenation of the nation. It is also the essential fact of the national competitiveness.
But the inherent features of government, like authority, monopoly and the
non-marketing may also easily caused the inefficient of the government.
According to the Swiss International Management Development institute
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(hereafter, IMD), in the last five years (1998-2002), the competitiveness of China
ranked 21, 29, 30, 33 and 31 respectively among the 49 global economies. In the same
period, the Chinese government efficiency of global ranked 19, 31, 32, 35 and 30
respectively. The rankings of government efficiency and the international
competitiveness rankings are positively correlated. It’s the relatively low level of
government efficiency which influences the improving of China's national
competitiveness. Therefore, fully understanding the characteristics of government and
government efficiency, learning from the international experience and improving
Chinese government efficiency have some great significance. However, because of
the governmental publicness, it has increased the difficulty to quantify the
government investments and benefits which make the connotations of the government
efficiency are difficult to define. It is also difficult to accurately find out which
specific factor influences government efficiency and how to improve it. As a
consequence, researching and measuring the government efficiency have become a
challenging task for us.
Ⅰ. Government efficiency and its Uniqueness
The government is the highest and the most neat social organization or institution
to reflect the will of the state and the national function. It is the combination of
legislation, judiciary and administration. The government executes its will of the state
by performing various social functions.
The government is an important part of the public sector which is parallel to the
private sector in the terms of economics. It is responsible for the government to
provide pure social public products and services, and through the financial means to
provide the majority of the indirect quasi-public goods or services. The government is
the result of political order instead of the result of exchange market. Compared with
the private sectors, government departments have the unique characteristics——since
it is the result of the political elections, this kind of natural legitimacy makes it obtain
the authority beyond the private sectors even the market rules, and it can exercise the
administrative power to the whole society including the private sectors. Meanwhile,
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the government of the inherent political character makes it have enforcement and
universality which other organizations or individuals do not have. As Almond ever
said, "the political system is not the only system to establish and implement the rules.
But, the regulations of political system formulating and its implementation are
supported by force. " (Almond and Powell 1987, 5)The government is also unique and
non-profit on the basis of enforcement, that is to say, once it is elected and accepted
by the law, the whole society members and organizations have to accept its
management passively and enjoy the public products and services. In addition, as the
organization of the political power, public goods production and management
department, the goal of government is to achieve the social public benefit
maximization. The costs of the government providing non-exclusive, non-competitive
public goods through the non-market mechanism have nothing to do with its benefits.
Also, the government activities are not profit-oriented, so it makes the government
lack motivation to reduce the costs and improve the efficiency
For those characteristics, when the government allocates resources, provides
public goods and services, it may cause the loss of efficiency, namely the government
failure. Raising government efficiency is one of the important ways to reducing
government failure. But the first thing we should do is to recognize and then study the
government efficiency.
The government efficiency is the comparison of costs and benefits from all kinds
of activities the government has engaged in, it is "the unity of quality and quantity, the
unity of value and efficacy ", (Huang Daqiang 1988 , 365 - 366)it is ratio relations between
final results which is coming out when the administrative organization and
administrative staff is dealing with social and public affairs, realizing administrative
target activities and the consumption about the manpower, materials and financial
resources, time, the information, and the space. (Xu Renzhang 2002, 198)It is "Using the
least cost to achieve the established goals or maximize the output when the cost is
established”.(Robert 1997, 178)Government efficiency is the unity of the qualitative
aspect and quantitative aspect. The particularity of government makes the government
efficiency specific. And due to the special position of the government, the government
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runs inefficient for a long time. On the one hand, because the government activities
are non-marketing, we cannot use the market price to measure it, so it is difficult to
quantify and compare the results of government activities, and also it is difficult to
analysis the costs and benefits of government behaviors directly. Therefore, all of
those make the government behaviors lack the constraint of costs which cause the
waste of resources. On the other hand, because of the government in the monopoly
position, there is no competition pressure, the government lacks motivation to
improve the service quality and its own efficiency, then the situation coming out
mentioned by "Parkinson's law": whether the government works more or not, or even
do not work at all, the number of government agency personnel always increases at a
similar speed. The expansion of government institution not only makes the operation
costs more, but the huge institution itself may cause the low efficiency more easily.
As a consequence, the government mechanism has innate efficiency problems.
The character of government efficiency makes the measurement become
relatively. The efficiency of a certain local government must be compared with the
government activities or work at the same level to figure out its efficiency is high or
not.
Government efficiency is not like the enterprise production efficiency, the latter
one is based on product and real objects, which can be analyzed in a quantitative way
at the same economy standards precisely. Tangible results and consumption of the
government activities can be calculated in figures, but the invisible results and loss
cannot be calculated. Therefore, the government efficiency is generally measured by
comparing several alternatives or a few government management activities. At the
same time, the examination of the government efficiency also needs considering the
time as a standard, and it should be compared with the base period of efficiency.
Government efficiency measurement possesses the characteristic of duality, and it is
the relative unification of the present and the future. On the one hand, the government
efficiency means the government should allocate public resources effectively with the
least manpower, material resources and financial resources to achieve the biggest
social economic output and meet people's demand at the maximum. On the other hand,
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government efficiency also means distributing social achievements or wealth
effectively, namely it means pursuing the social justice, so that it can surely to realize
the effective distribution of social resources and the sustainable development of
human beings at present and even in the future.
Therefore, the government efficiency has the general meaning about the
input-output ratio of the government activities. It is not only the quantity standard in
the sense of economics, but the quality index in the sense of sociology.
Ⅱ . Measurement of Government Efficiency (International Institute for
Management Development 18and676)
The uniqueness of government efficiency makes the research and government
efficiency measurement have practical significance. Recently, IMD, the authority in
government efficiency, has quantified government efficiency from the perspective of
national competitiveness, which can be used for reference on the research and
measurement of government efficiency in China.
IMD, as the authority in national competitive field, its evaluation system is built
on the theoretical framework of enterprises competitiveness, national competitiveness
and the relationship of them. IMD assumes that wealth is fundamentally created by
enterprise, and the enterprise is operating in the whole nation’s environment, this kind
of environment can improve or block the enterprise’s national or international
competitiveness. IMD called the research of this field as national competitiveness
study. Meanwhile, IMD points out that the relationship between the competitiveness
of enterprises and national competitiveness. And four aspects of national environment,
namely economic performance, government efficiency, business efficiency and
infrastructure are built on the basis of the relationship. These aspects exactly
constitute a complete national competitiveness evaluation system which is to support
the business competitiveness.
According to the evaluation system of IMD, government efficiency is
determined by public finance, fiscal policy, organization, business regulation and
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education. These elements can be divided into some sub-elements and 84 indicators to
measure government efficiency specifically. These elements, sub-elements and
indexes of government efficiency measurement including:
Public finance (including 10 hard indicators and 1 soft indicator) hard indicators
include the central government budget surplus or deficit, the central government
budget surplus or deficit in the percentage of GDP, domestic liabilities of the central
government, central government domestic debts in the percentage of GDP, foreign
liabilities of the central government, the central governmental foreign liabilities in the
percentage of GDP, the growth rate of the central governmental gross liabilities,
interest payments in the percentage of current income, the country’s total reserve
holdings (including gold reserves and official reserves), and general government final
consumption expenditure (% of GDP). The soft indicator is the management of public
finance.
Fiscal policy (11hard indicators and 3 soft indicators). The 10 hard indicators
include tax revenues (% of GDP), personal income tax effective tax rate (% of per
capita GDP), personal income tax, social security contribution rates of employees,
social security contributions of employees, capital and property rates、indirect taxes.
The soft indicators include the effective personal taxes, the effective corporate tax and
tax evasion.
Organizations
(including 3 sub-elements, 5 hard indicators and 17 soft
indicators). 1. Central bank. It includes 4 hard indicators——short-term real interest
rates, the interest rate differential, national credit rating and stability of exchange rate ,
and also 3 soft indicators, which is the costs of capital , the central bank policy and
exchange rate policy. 2. Narrow government efficiency. It includes 10 soft indicators,
namely, consistency of policy direction, legal system, new legislation, the
governments’ economic policy, government decision-making, political organizations,
transparency, public services, bureaucracy, bribery and corruption. 3. Fairness and
security. It contains 1 hard indicator——serious crimes, and 4 soft indicators, which
is fairness, personal safety and personal property, policy instability risk, as well as
social cohesion.
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Business regulation (including 4 sub-elements, 1 hard indicator and 23 soft
indicators). 1. The degree of openness. It only contains 5 soft targets: the degree of a
country participate in regional trade blocs, customs authority, protectionism, public
sector contracts, export credit and insurance. 2. Competition rules. It contains 1 hard
indicator, which is government subsidies, and six soft indicators, which is competition
legislation, products and services legislation, price control, underground economy,
foreign companies as well as new enterprises. 3. Labor laws. It contains 3 soft
indicators, which is labor laws, legislation of unemployment and immigration laws. 4.
The capital market regulations. It contains 9 soft indicators——financial institutions
regulations, the confidentiality of financial transactions, the risk of transnational
business, foreign investors, foreign financial institutions , access to domestic capital
markets, access to foreign capital markets, investment incentives and investment
protection plans.
Education (including 7 hard indicators and 6 soft indicators).7 hard indicators
refer to whole public expenditure on education, the ratio between students and
teachers in primary education and secondary education, secondary school enrollment,
higher education performance, educational assessment, the rate of illiteracy, and 6 soft
indicators refer to education systems, university education, economic literacy,
education fund, qualified engineers, transfer of knowledge.
The index system of measuring government efficiency contains the above five
elements, and these elements are given the same weight in the calculation of the
results, which means when we calculate the standardized values and the sorted results
of the government efficiency, each of them constitutes twenty percent.
.
IMD uses the Standard deviation method to measure the standardized value and
the order of government efficiency. But because the 84 indexes reflecting government
efficiency have different measures, we can only use the comparable standardized
measurement to calculate the results of government efficiency entirety, elements and
indexes. Using SDM can measure rates of different countries, places and their
difference. It also can estimate the relative position in the world economies precisely.
The formula of index standard deviation is:
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S
n
(X
i 1
i
 X )2
1
n
According to the standard deviation, the 84 indicators’ standardized value (STD)
can be calculated respectively, which are acquired by the original value of each
country or each region particular index minus its average value, and then divided by
the standard deviation.
For example, the indicator’s STD of No. i is calculated by the following
formula：
(STD) i  ( X i  X ) / S
In this formula，X i =the original value of No. i；X = indicator’s average value of
No. i in a particular nation or region; n=the number of nations or regions; STD=
standardized value.
So we can rank each indicator according to the standardized value of the
government efficiency. Generally speaking, if one indicator’s STD value is much
higher in a country or a region, then the government has higher efficiency in this field,
and the country or region is high in the ranking. But, in some cases, lower STD values
are, some particular efficiency indicators ranks higher. Therefore, in these cases, the
ranking of these indicators should be used in the reverse order.
According to the indicators in STD, the standard value of government
efficiency’s elements, sub-elements and indicators can be easily calculated in the
arithmetical average method. And then according to the results, we can rank these
indicators.
The index that IMD chooses to measure Government efficiency and the way of
calculation is scientific and effective, which can be represented as follows:
Firstly, the index that used to measure the government efficiency is scientific
and comprehensive.
The 84 indexes that IMD has chosen to reflect the government efficiency
respectively indicated the quantity and quality that the government uses law, finance,
administration and education to implement the social functions through five aspects:
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public finance, finance policy, organization, business regulation and education. It
reflects the total scale of government input through the indexes such as budget surplus
and deficit, debts, expenditure in government, which reveals the feasibility and
rationality of the government input. And through the relative rate of GDP to show
the results and efficiency via the ratio of various tax and GDP, the proportion (number)
of social guarantee, and the ratio of all kinds of gains and GDP.
The indexes covered by the organizations reflect almost all of government
institutions (except the national defense institutions), namely the operating quality of
the institutions such as finance, administration, lawmaking, law enforcement and
judiciary. The indexes related to business regulation reflect the market order
standardization, market disorder solution, enterprise efficiency improving activities
set by government with regulation and it also reflects the level of service provided by
market and enterprises. The comparison between expenditure of education and GDP
as well as the scale and quality of social basic education (the ratio between teachers
and students in junior high school, the number of students and engineers) can show us
the operating quality and efficiency in education service.
Secondly, the measure indexes reflect the particularity of government efficiency.
The choice about the index of government efficiency made by IMD reflects the
particularity of government efficiency. The indexes used to measure government
efficiency are partly relative and qualitative, which embody the complex and the
particularity of government efficiency.
These indexes include hard indexes and soft indexes. Hard indexes mean the
measureable number of government efficiency while Soft indexes refer to the
subjective feeling of government efficiency, both of which come from thirty six
government institutions and non-governmental organizations which have cooperated
with IMD.
Most of the measure indexes are subjective soft indexes, which reflect the
particularity of government efficiency, as it is difficult to absolutely measure
government efficiency so that we must measure it through our subjective feeling.
The 50 soft indexes of government efficiency are coming from questionnaires to
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3532 managers in 49 economic all over the world. Among the 34 hard indexes, 16 are
the comparison with GDP, 8 are the comparison with indexes concerned income. That
is to say that there are 24 relative indexes in 34 hard indexes and only 10 of them
reflect absolute indexes.
Thirdly, the way of quantifying government efficiency is scientific. Because the
indexes that reflect the government efficiency is complex, and most of the 84 indexes
chosen by IMD are difficult, only the simple statistical method which converts
different indexes into comparable standard value can comprehensively measure
government efficiency.
For convenient calculation, IMD gives the five main factors in government
efficiency the same weight. They use the standard deviation method (SDM) to convert
the factors and indexes measuring government efficiency into standardization value
(STD), in order to rank them according to the value. This kind of simple and practical
way is in favor of measuring the government efficiency and complex factors among
various countries or areas, and also their complex elements or the relative differences
of the indexes. It is also in favor of evaluating its relative status of the ultimate
ranking in 49 economic entities.
In addition, IMD has provided indexes value and rankings in the former four
years while calculating the standard value and the ultimate ranks of government
efficiency in 49 countries or areas, which makes it easy to reflect the relative variation
of government efficiency and makes the research of government efficiency more
scientific and practical.
Ⅲ. The envisagement of measuring provincial government efficiency in
China
Socialist market economy system is establishing in China at present. The
functions of government are similar to the function in other market economic
countries，such as supplying public goods, managing public affairs, or eliminating
market failure, reducing external effect and improving the quality of society and
constant development of human.
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Because China is experiencing the transition from planning economic system to
market economic system, the government takes the responsibility for functional
transformation, market cultivation and economic development. Comprehensively
considerate the measuring theory of government efficiency provided by IMD and the
factual condition in our country, in the premise of fixed input and taking no account
of time factors, the authors used the setting measuring indexes, measuring extent,
measuring period and measuring method to quantitatively analyze the government
efficiency in the provincial government.
1. The idea of index choosing
The choice of measuring index is the premise of quantifying the government
efficiency.
Measuring indexes should be representative, independent and available. (Economic
and Resource Management Institute of Beijing Normal University
2003, 199)
Representation refers to the indexes should reflect the factual political situation in our
country and embody the essence and characteristics of the government efficiency.
Meanwhile, it should be global comparability. Independence refers to the indexes
should be independent but not be compatible or duplicated. Availability refers to that
indexes should be quantitative and the statistics should be relatively integrated.
At the same time, the indexes should be in an unite index system, that is to say，
the indexes measuring government efficiency should contain: Index factors,
sub-factors and indexes.
In order to reflect the feature and the level of provincial government efficiency
objectively, the authors have selected statistical data which are published around
China, in order to build the government efficiency measurement on the quantitative
original data. So authors think we should analysis the social economic effects from
the government inputs and outputs, in order to find out the mathematical laws of
government inputs and outputs in some publications like “China Statistical Yearbook”,
“China Economic Yearbook”, “China Environment Yearbook”and“Law Yearbook
of China”. Then we have found out that the financial expenditure of Chinese
government mainly goes towards the fields like cultural and sports broadcasting,
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education, health, administration, capital construction, farming, forestry, water
conservancy, meteorology, enterprise transformation, public security, urban policy
subsidies, social security, science and technology. These fields not only cover the
major function of Chinese provincial government, but also reflect the level of
government efficiency. Authors have selected 47 indexes with complete statistical
data which are caused by the financial expenditure, and reflect the effect of inputs
(namely the incomes and outcomes of governments). Then, authors have combined
the principle of public economics, administration and statistics with the provincial
government practice, to build a complete index system made up of the index factors,
sub-factors and index to measure the efficiency of provincial government.
2. The index of Chinese provincial government efficiency
Referring to the principles that IMD has selected to measure government
efficiency, and combining our original thinking, we have designed an index system to
measure the efficiency of Chinese provincial government, it consists of 47 indexes
including government public services, public goods, and the size of governments,
residents and economic well-beings.
The index of Chinese provincial government efficiency
Factors
Sub-factors
Indexes
Government public
The service of science,
1. The per capita costs of science(yuan)
services
education, culture and
2. The ratio of superior product (%)
health
3. The approved quantity of three kind of patent
4. Per capita
turnover
technology market(yuan)
application
(per
100,000inpeople)
5.The ratio between student and teacher in primary
6.The ratio between student and teacher in secondary
education
7. Illiteracy rate and semi-literacy rate (%)
education
8. The ratio between education budget and GDP (%)
9 literature and art publishing companies (per 100,000
10.Hospital beds (per 100,000 people)
people)
11.Employees in health field (per 100,000 people)
Public safety services
12.The ratio of three accidents (per 100,000 people)
13. Per capita loss in three accidents(yuan)
14. The number of legislation
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15. The accepted cases in court of first instance
16.The closed cases in court of first instance
17. The number of arrested suspects
18. The number of criminal cases
19.The ratio of criminal cases (per 100,000 people)
Meteorological services
20. The number of sites about agricultural
21. The number 100,000
of earthquake
monitoring stations (per
meteorology(per
people)
Social security services
22. Thepeople)
number of employment agencies at the end of
100,000
23.year
The(per
number
of service
facilities in community (per
the
100,000
people)
24.The people)
social security network in countryside (per
100,000
Government public goods
Social infrastructure
1.The investment
100,000
people) of capital construction and renovation
The ratio
between central government projects and
in2.national
budget
3. Infrastructure
commissioning
rate of
local
government construction
projects in theand
investment
of capital
4. The efficiency of projects
solve industrial
pollution (%)
renovating
(%)
constructionreformed
and Renovation (%)
5. The capacity of the reservoir (billion cubic meters per
6. Thepeople)
ratio between nature reserve areas and areas under
10,000
Urban infrastructure
7. The penetration
administration
(%) of gas in cities (%)
8. The number of public vehicles (per 10,000 people)
9.The area of the road in city (square meters)
10. The area of public green space in cities (square
11. The number of public toilets (per 10,000 people)
meters)
The size of government
1. The ratio of the number of employees in
2. The proportion
of employees
in the
administration
and the
number of in
theadministration
total population
(per
3. The of
ratio
final
consumption
number
thebetween
employed
population
(%) and government
10,000 people)
4. The ratio between
government consumption and GDP
consumption
(%)
5. The proportion of fines and administrative fees in the
(%)
Economic well-being of
residents
1. Perrevenue
capita pure
fiscal
(%) income in countryside (yuan)
2. Per capita disposable income in urban areas (yuan)
3. Engel coefficient in countryside (%)
4. Engel coefficient in urban areas (%)
5. CPI (yuan)
6 .GDP per capita (yuan)
7. The ratio between policy-related subsidies and
3. The definitions and the sources of statistics
expenditure ( %)
The 47 hard indicators measuring provincial government efficiency were deriving
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from the authority, the name and original data came from yearbooks and were
transformed by the authors. Furthermore, the date which has been calculated with the
units of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities basically reflects the
efficiency of Chinese provincial governments. The 24 indexes of government public
services reflect the number and quality of major public services, and it is an important
index of government efficiency. The three fees are new product testing costs,
intermediate trial costs, and important scientific research subsidies costs; the number
of three approved patent application are apply for inventions, utility models, industrial
designs; In the ratio between students and teachers, students means students
enrollment and the teacher means teachers on the job; secondary education includes
junior secondary school, S & P high and vocational high school education; the ratio of
illiteracy and semi-literacy means the proportion of illiteracy and semi-literacy in 15
or above 15 in the total population; the number of literature and art publishing units
means performing arts groups and venues, cultural centers, public libraries, museums,
the press, the national fixed-point printing and bookstores; Health workers include
doctors, nurses and so on; the three accidents include Traffic accidents, fires,
environmental pollution and damage accidents; the number of arrested suspects is the
number of criminal suspects.
Those 11 Public goods indicators reflect the practicality public goods our
provincial government effectively provided, mainly referring to the urban and rural
infrastructure. The investment in infrastructure means the activities and projects
whose investment is (RMB) 500000 yuan (including 500000 yuan) that taken by
enterprise and institution in order to expand production capacity or improving project
efficiency. The renovation and reformation investment refer to the activities whose
investment exceeding (RMB) 500000 yuan (including 500000 yuan) that enterprises
and institutions are taken to update permanent assets and technology. The related
projects and activities also involve in it except the large repairing and maintenance
projects. Industrial waste treatment efficiency is the averages calculated by attainment
rate of the industrial waste water, industrial sulfur dioxide emission and synthesis
utilization rate of industrial solid waste. The urban surfaced roads mean all kinds of
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roads which the width is beyond 3.5 meters except packways.
Those 5 indicators of government scale reflect the volume of the government
staff
and
consumption
which
manifests
government
efficiency
directly.
Administrative employees refer to the people who work in state organs, political
parties and social organizations. Final consumption includes resident consumption
and government consumption.
Those 7 indicators of resident economic welfare reflect the living standard of
residents. Due to all the efforts to improve government efficiency is good for
improving residents welfare, indicators of residents economic welfare become a
spillover index to measure government efficiency. In those indicators, the Engel’s
coefficient of resident family refers to the proportion of food consumption spending in
total consumer.
4. The period and scale of the measurement
According to the characteristics of the government efficiency, combined with the
design of the index system, we will select 31 provinces, autonomous regions and
municipalities within five years statistical dates from 1998 to 2002 as original value to
measure government efficiency. By calculating and comparing the standardization
value and measure factors of index, we can analysis the level of provincial
government efficiency on rankings and the trend of change. The reason why the
authors have chosen the statistical date with in the period during 1998-2002
considerate are as follows: First of all, in 1997, with the establishment of ChongQing
municipality, our country formed a complete system of local government at the
provincial level, and in 1998, the various government statistics could independently
and completely reflect this paper measures the government efficiency index. Secondly,
since 1998 China was going to join the WTO, the official statistics caliber of China
has become more standardization and met the international convention. It also
basically conforms to the present statistics caliber and is easy to calculate and
compare. (Note: In 1999, China reached an agreement with the United States with the
problem to entry into the WTO. In the end China joined the WTO in 2001). Thirdly,
since the East Asian Financial Crisis happened in 1997, great changes have appeared
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in perform mode among provincial government functions. Statistical indexes after
1998 were so different from those before 1998 due to the change of government, as a
matter of course, the comparability of index also has been decreased. For the last one,
the period we have chosen among 1998-2002 is equal to a Five-Years Plan in our
ways to develop social and economics, it is good for reflecting the dynamic changes
and the trend of provincial local government efficiency.
Three reasons can explain why the measurement of central government
efficiency is not included in our studies. The first one is that provincial government
efficiency is the characterization of central government efficiency to a certain degree.
The second one is that we are lack of statistical data which is similar to the
measurement index of government efficiency from other countries. The last one is
that the global ranking and efficiency of China’s central government have been
studied by IMD. If we can collect enough data from various countries or areas, which
is similar to the statistics in our research, we can do the further study the central
government efficiency on a global scale.
5. The measurement of the provincial government efficiency
In the research ,47 indicators has been selected in our article to measure the
efficiency of the provincial governments .It can fully reflect the effort and effect in
four aspects such as public service, public goods, the government scale and economic
welfare. But these indexes are complicated, most of the scale of the index is different
(namely the complexity and diversity of index), in this paper, the quality of the
efficiency measurement index is similar to the government efficiency measurement
index selected by IMD. So, if we use standard deviation method set by IMD to
measure government efficiency, and give the public services, public goods, the
government scale and economic welfare different weights (The determination of
index weight determined by the number of index and relevancy between index and
government efficiency), we can transform different indexes into the standardized
value which can be compared with. At last, overall standard deviation of factors and
indexes about efficiency can be calculated in each China’s province. According to this
standardized value we can perform local government efficiency ranking which
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reflects the government efficiency measurement resulted in each provincial
scientifically.
In addition, the authors also will estate the standardized value and its changing
trend of provincial government efficiency from 1998 to 2002.With this measurement,
we can recognize the relative changes of government efficiency historically and
dynamically.
6. The analysis of reliability about government efficiency measurement
results
At present, the inspection on result of government efficiency measurement in
China mainly depends on the theoretical analysis. First of all, this measurement ----a
theorem that is to study the ability of country’s competition and government
efficiency which can be got by referring to IMD and comparing social economy
results from the social functions performing by 31 provincial governments. Secondly,
it is logical in our research that we build the efficiency measurement on the base of
different theoretical principles like political science, science of administrative,
economics and statistics. In the last place, the statistics of government efficiency are
reliable by combining the expenses and receipts from provincial government with the
normative statistical indexes. As a consequence, the research is useful for the
measurement results of provincial government efficiency.
Furthermore, according to the analysis of empirical data each year, we can figure
out the relationship between provincial government efficiency and economical growth
rate among 31 provincial governments in order to testify the reliability of provincial
government efficiency measurement results.
In conclusion, the particularity of government and government efficiency makes
the research of government efficiency meaningful in practice and in theory. Studying
the theory of provincial government efficiency by using IMD for referring and
combing with the national conditions is in favor of choosing indexes to measure
Chinese provincial government efficiency scientifically.
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Reference
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Golembiewski. Robert T. 1997, Public Administration as Developing Discipline.New York :
Marcel Dekker.
Economic and Resource Management Institute of Beijing Normal University.
2003, Market
Economy Development Report In China 2003.Beijing: China International Business and
Economics Press.
Huang Daqiang. 1998, Public Administration. Beijing: China Renmin University Press.
International Institute for Management Development. 2002, World Competitiveness yearbook
2002. Trans.Yao Junmei.Beijing: China Financial and Economic Publishing House.
Xu Renzhang. 2002, Public Administration. Beijing:China Financial and Economic Publishing
House.
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