Study of urban public goods and Suggestions

[Abstract] In the twenty-first century, urbanization, Economic growth is not only a strong point, but also an important means to enhance national welfare, if not handled properly it will become China's sustained rapid Economic development barriers. Based on the review of public goods development of the theory of analysis of the current status of the field of urban public goods, and made some suggestions and views.

[Key Words] urban equity and efficiency of public goods supply

First, the definition of urban public goods

Urban public goods are generally defined as: a city within a limited range in order to achieve the goal of urban development, urban residents to ensure the health and safety as the prerequisite for social progress and development of urbanization, the provision of public goods and public services. such as local education, public security, fire, roads, bridges, water supply network, sewage treatment and so on. the city is different from the general public goods, public goods are mainly embodied in his culture, although the characteristics of public goods in general, but the main role in a the city. As urban public goods essential for the development of the city, coupled with the current modest relaxation of the hukou system in China and urbanization policy, the study of urban public goods become more important.


Second, the current domestic Research

The current domestic academic Research on urban public goods mainly concentrated in two areas, namely, the main supply and supply patterns. For current supply of public goods is not the academic debate, as long-planned Economic system and restrictions on the level of Economic development, combined with system flaws China's mainland cities insufficient supply of public goods is an indisputable fact. to the current point of view, whether it is capital or consumer of public goods public goods, the supply can not meet the demand. As of 2007, mainland China's urbanization rate of more than 40 %. according to current projections, by 2020 China's urban population will exceed 7 million. coupled with Economic development and improved living standards, when the city water, electricity, fuel lines, education, justice and other public goods demand will show a geometric growth, if not effectively solve the problem of effective supply of public goods, sustainable development of China's economy will be severely constrained. for the supply of public goods is to determine what the supply side to scale and fully effective in meeting the needs of both balance become a serious problem. to solve this problem should first find a suitable main supply of public goods. The early Research for the public good scholars generally believe that the Government should provide public goods, but with further Research and the "non-pure public goods" concept The proposal, people aware of the differences, "purity" of public goods should be done by the supply of different subjects.


1, the supply of pure public goods
Pure public goods because of its absolute non-exclusive and non-competitive, the market simply can not provide, it must be supplied by the government. The city is so pure public goods, but this is a non-exclusive and non-competitive to be reflected in a certain geographical area. As to the central government or by local governments tend to supply the current academic basic supply of local government. based on the local government area residents a better understanding of the needs of public goods preferences, in addition, many scholars believe that the right to choose in different areas of public goods should be The type and quantity.

Although scholars have generally agreed that the city of pure public goods by the city authorities to provide reasonable, but under our current system of municipal efficiency of the supply of public goods is still a controversial academic. Argument is efficiency and fairness. The one hand, China's current decision-making system fully reflects the behavior of efficiency, but economic efficiency is the existence of a wide range of questions. As the Government's implementation of the yield curve with the public in the field deviation from the yield curve, so their behavior will conflict with the purpose.'s income depends on the implementation of Its action is to meet the preferences of a superior officer rather than to meet the public's preferences for public goods. The higher the supply of regional public goods tend to have less understanding of the actual needs of even the deviation. Moreover, the internal current household registration system has been relaxed though, but people still can not, as as low-cost Western countries to achieve "voting with their feet." directly affect the municipal authorities that conditions on the efficiency of the supply of public goods. Second, the current centralized system of local government does not tax legislative and tax reform and further charges in the fiscal area deprived local authorities for the provision of public goods to choose some special source of income. tax purposes and tax purposes is not clear the confusion has affected the efficient use of financial resources, and ultimately affect the efficiency or the supply of public goods.


2, the city's supply of quasi-public goods
Unlike the city of pure public goods, quasi-public goods with a certain degree of exclusivity and competition, this item if the user is also easy to cause too much congestion. For example, roads, water supply network, telecommunications, airports and so on. These public goods "purity" as opposed to judicial, parks, museums and other lower, the possibility of a fee there. For such goods, domestic and foreign scholars believe that you can diversify supply. In addition, Guangxi Normal University Professor Huang Hedong make non-pure market supply of public goods the three conditions, namely, market economy conditions, technical conditions and consumption of public goods, exclusive of non-pure condition. The current of the municipal authorities for such non-pure public goods supply means in accordance with the "purity" probably can be summarized into two species: the supply of municipal authorities or by public means way through the market supply of municipal authorities.

Supply of so-called public way that the Government provided free of charge to consumers, but through taxes to pay its costs. For the part of the "purity" is relatively high, a large external benefit products, if provided by the market efficiency will cause a greater loss, for which some products, the Government provided by the public will be higher than the efficiency of private supply. But for this "purity" and there is no uniform definition of standards. there an example of urban roads, although now most of the domestic urban road taken by the municipal authorities to provide public , and then through the collection of maintenance fees (now replaced by gasoline taxes) ways to achieve cost recovery. But many local construction and operation of private capital to absorb part of the city roads, the establishment of toll charges on passing vehicles.

In addition to the supply of public way, it now has a wide range of municipal authorities with the introduction of private capital to provide public goods in this way. In the field of public goods provision is conducive to the introduction of private capital, the supply of public goods to improve the efficiency and competitiveness. In addition, both the current government recognized academic or supply does not equal production, the introduction of private capital to ensure that limited financial resources in the case of municipalities to better meet the public demand for public goods. administrative monopoly in China under the severe conditions, the introduction of competition can also be quite degree of administrative monopoly and curb rent-seeking to break the behavior. Specifically, the scholars will introduce the market mechanism of supply of the municipal authorities the way summarized in three ways. the BOT model (build-operate-transfer) and its subsequent evolution from the BOOT ( build-own-operate-transfer) model, BOO (build-own
-Operate) mode, BLT (build-lease-transfer) mode; "public-private partnership model" that ppp (public-private-partnership) model; ABS mode (asset-backed
-Securitization) is the project to ensure that income can be expected to issue international bonds to finance the way. ABS methods in addition to the advantages of financing a large space but also have a big advantage that the Government not to increase "balance sheet" on the debt ratio. Links Free Download Center http://www.hi138.com in three papers, conclusions and recommendations

1, the current problems
Although scholars of the need for private provision of public goods is more awareness of unity, but the level of awareness of different modes is still more confusion. The existing literature seems more focused discussions in private goods and public goods by technology, that is, through the exclusive technology public goods and production technology division of the "purity", and then listed according to the purity of theory or the taking of the supply of different business models. also some scholars consider the private supply efficiency focus, they focus on efficiency losses mainly from two aspects: First, municipal authorities and enterprises as a public spokesman for project costs and profitability of public access to information asymmetry; Second question whether it can effectively eliminate the private supply of free-riding phenomenon. However, the municipal authorities for public goods in the region need to understand the degree of preference for small, and no significant results. Moreover, although scholars have expressed concern that private capital into public goods areas requiring municipal authorities to clear property rights as incentives, but also a lot of literature describes the private capital studied under public goods supply efficiency and price determination of Research, but the lack of municipal authorities to introduce private capital investment in the field of public goods is caused by a new study of administrative monopoly. In addition the municipal authorities on how to solve for the operation of private capital into the public domain within the regulatory system for deficiencies and lack of supervision of municipal authorities are also in large areas of blank state.

On the whole, through decades of research, we found that the actual public goods problem is to solve the problems of market failure. But the fact is that under the current system, we try to solve the basic characteristics of public goods due to market failures caused Shiyou new efficiency losses. scholars have been thinking about externalities and property rights, such as solving problems caused by market failures, the authorities also led efforts to make up new loopholes in the system and the elimination of unfair barriers to efficiency loss, but there is not an old problem by the enforcement authorities in the actual operation of the process of attention, namely, how effective display of public preferences for public goods, and therefore the more necessary since the study clearly defined property rights-based comprehensive analysis of how to present the principal-agent mechanism of integrated display public preferences for public goods.


2, the proposed
Although we listed all these problems, but still boils down to two aspects: first, the expression of needs and preferences of the show; second is the effective supply. The preference shown, we have described for some of the literature is not to say, here mainly want to talk about is based on Western public choice theory, the operation of the legislature should be preferred as an expression of the primary means of public practice. Therefore, the municipal People's Congress of China should give full play to this role, for the city government's various programs to choose public goods supply . In this process, we must further strengthen democratic supervision, and the deputies of the electoral process to further improve the degree of citizen participation. Second, the city of the ruling authorities as providers of public goods should take the initiative through a variety of actual investigation to obtain citizen demand for public goods data This practice is not impossible, Buchanan has proposed survey revealed preference approach, but this approach technically demanding, requires city governing the implementation of the more scientific.

On the supply side, the same we will not go into the content has already been mentioned, we believe that the ruling authorities must take account of fairness and efficiency. The one hand, the supply of public goods to clear the actual transfer is paid by the government to reduce the system of market failure caused by defects and gap between rich and poor; the other hand, expenditures must be taken from the people benefit of the people, broken all kinds of taxes to minimize free-riding. efficiency, the municipal authorities should distinguish between the supply and production. At the same time, for public goods scientific purity and type of decision-making. In addition, the initiative needs to collect information science to develop programs to reduce the operating costs of legislative bodies is also an effective means of improving efficiency.


[References]
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[3] Fang Fu ago: Public Choice Theory [M]. Beijing: China Renmin University Press, 2000.

[4] Yin Bamboo: infrastructure industry market-oriented reforms [M]. Beijing: Economic Science Press, 2004.

[5] Cui Weihua: the definition of urban public goods and the transformation of government functions [J]. Cities, 2003 (4).

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