The determinants of fiscal transparency in Chinese city-level governments

Abstract

The transparency of the fiscal performance of governments has attracted attention from researchers, policy-makers and practitioners around the world. This study examines the determinants of fiscal transparency in the city-level governments of China, which has become a key issue in the drive to modernise the Chinese state. Employing crosssectional data from the 2017 Statistical Yearbooks published by the official statistical institutions and the 2017 Fiscal transparency report of city-level governments edited by the Tsinghua University, this study finds that economic development, economic openness, and dependence on transfer payments are associated with weaker fiscal transparency. Large cities, those with high levels of internet usage and cities higher up within the Chinese administrative hierarchy are associated with stronger fiscal transparency. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Empirical Study on the Evaluation Model of Public Satisfaction With Local Government Budget Transparency: A Case From China

“…Researchers elaborated the necessity of budget transparency from the perspectives of institutional theory (Carpenter & Feroz, 2001;Hoffman, 2001), rule-of-law principle (Bingham et al, 2005;Patten, 1992), citizens' right to know (Alt & Lassen, 2006), principal-agent relationship (Benito & Bastida, 2010;Sun & Andrews, 2020), restraints of public power, and anti-corruption (Lane & Milesi, 2004;Reinikka & Svensson, 2004).…”

“…To this end, this study proposes a budget transparency public satisfaction index (BTPSI) model to examine the factors affecting public satisfaction with budget transparency in Chinese policy practice. The model is based on the theory of customer satisfaction and the characteristics of local government budget information (Sun & Andrews, 2020), while acknowledging the difference between public and private sectors. To ensure a good estimation result, this study introduces the partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) for empirical analysis.…”

Transparência Passiva Do Governo Federal Brasileiro: O Mesmo Acesso Para Todos?

“…Estudos testaram se há relação positiva entre a transparência e o grau de escolaridade e os resultados são variados e, portanto, inconclusivos, uma vez que parte deles confirmam a hipótese de existência dessa relação (Chen et al, 2019;Lowatcharin & Menifield, 2015;Tekeng & Sharaf, 2015) e parte não suportam tal hipótese (Birskyte, 2019;Silva & Bruni, 2019;Sun & Andrews, 2020). Como os pedidos de informações exigem do solicitante a habilidade de escrever de forma compreensível, TRANSPARÊNCIA PASSIVA DO GOVERNO FEDERAL: O MESMO ACESSO PARA TODOS?…”

“…Os estudos encontrados na literatura de determinantes da transparência que utilizaram a variável profissão (Sun & Andrews, 2020;Zuccolotto & Teixeira, 2014) utilizaram a mesma de forma binária, ou seja, na proporção de empregados e desempregados da região, o que caracteriza a variável emprego.…”

Fiscal Transparency and Public Service Quality Association: Evidence from 12 Coastal Provinces and Cities of China

“…First, it is directly measured by the government's fiscal expenditure in a certain public service area. For example, per capita, fiscal expenditure on culture, education, science, and health is used to measure the quality of public services (Zulkofli et al 2018;Pedrosa et al 2020;Sun and Andrews 2020;Fan and Zhang 2013). This is the narrowest measurement method, which means a higher level of public services expenditure will inevitably lead to a higher quality of public services as so defined.…”