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

SL

Comments

Author Response

1

The paper is well organized and reasonably written.  The literature review in respect of the methodological background needs improvement, the overall identification and verification of the research gap are not shown. The empirical part needs a robust check, as it was not cross-validated with different public service quality measurements. The contribution is weakly articulated, the JRFM audience is rather international, thus local matters in China are rather out of interest unless the finding might be interpreted from a global perspective. The organization of the introduction is rather odd.

Thank you very much for your comments. I really, appreciate your valuable time and effort for this review. As per your direction, I reorganization and improved the introduction section.

How is public service quality in the coastal provinces and cities, which are the most developed regions in China?

Has fiscal transparency that promotes the modern process of government governance contributed to the improvement of public service quality in these regions?

What is the mechanism through which fiscal transparency affects public service quality?

The above issues deserve further study. Therefore, the answers to these questions can provide some reference for the international audience, especially to improve other countries public service quality by increasing fiscal transparency.

The specific modification is mentioned in line 26-127.

2

In my opinion, the introduction needs reorganization. The first five paragraphs are rather a literature review than a non-technical introduction. I suggest first to show the research issue, link to the goal, show the importance of research for the global audience note the method, time, and sample, enhance the contribution.

According to the suggestion, I reorganization the introduction. The specific modification is mentioned in line 26-39,43-127

3

The methodology should discuss the methods applied in a broader context, Hwang and Yoon proposed clustering which is derived as an enhancement of the Wroclaw Taxonomy [1] dated back to 1947, which in turn is derived from the prior works of  Czekanowski [2] at the beginning of XX century. I believe the strongest part of the paper is the methodological discussion, thus a more general overview of the international landscape would improve the paper.

I give a more general overview of the international landscape for the methodology. “Many authors in the worldwide use the TOPSIS to evaluate, assess and rank alternatives across diverse industries, such as Supply Chain Management and Logistics, Design Engineering and Manufacturing Systems, Business and Marketing Management, Health Safety and Environment Management, Human Resources Management, Energy Management, Chemical Engineering, Water Resources Management, and Other topics”. The specific modification is mentioned in line 178-186.

4

The development of the working hypothesis lacks clear tests for the research gap identification, which results in thin contribution, you might consider checking the completeness of the research gap identification e.g. with their citation regression count test [3].

This paper analyses the two mechanisms by which fiscal transparency affects public service quality.

 First, A sufficient amount of public expenditure funds is the basis for improving the quality of public services. Fiscal transparency is conducive to the optimization of the structure of fiscal expenditures and promotes increased investment in public services. Fiscal transparency improves the scale of public service expenditure by increasing public service welfare expenditure.

 Second, Fiscal transparency is not only conducive to promoting the optimization of fiscal expenditure structure but also conducive to enhancing the efficiency of the use of public service funds, thereby effectively improving fiscal transparency performance and increasing the quality of public service. Fiscal transparency can improve the efficiency of public service expenditure by curbing the occurrence of official corruption.

The specific modifications are mentioned on line 278-286, 295-298, 304-306, 313-314and 447-448

5

The results of regression could be data-driven, not cross test for the stability no robustness test lack of the methods and assumption discussion or pointing out to limitation of the approach. A nice overview of the potential robustness testing presents Lu and White [4].

The results are poorly linked to the current discussion on urban areas development compare to Chen at al. [5] Su at al. [6] for the paper organization and building up the arguments and linkage of the results to the current discussion. Yao [7] for the current discussion on air quality.

I added the discussion of the approach. “The panel data model can solve the problem of missing variables caused by individual heterogeneity and improve the validity of estimation by increasing sample information, but which can cause some problem, such as the error items of the same individual in different periods have autocorrelation”.

The specific information is mentioned in line 329-334.

6

A few minor recommendations for improvements:

small corrections

P12. l. 426 Capitalization

Acknowledgments in advance are rather strange unless you do not get the reviewers’ reports.

Thanks for pointing out the mistake.

Capitalization issue resolved and specific modification is mentioned in line 522.

 Acknowledgment section revised; the specific modification is mentioned in line 492-493.

SL

Comments

Author Response

1

The paper is investigates important issue and has high interest to the readers. It shows high scientific soundness. Introduction, conclusions and results should be improved. It needs additional English proof-reading because I have detected several words mis-use.

Thank you very much for your comments. I really, appreciate your valuable time and effort for this review.

As per your direction Introduction, conclusions, and results sections are revised. The specific modification is mentioned on line 26-127 (Introduction), 445-486 (conclusions) and 280-286, 294-398, 330-334 for results.

The paper English language has now been updated by an experienced researcher to greatly reduce the misuse of words and typos.

2

The introduction is not sufficient, it doesn't give any idea if there were previous studies on fiscal transparency and public service quality relationship and what were the findings of the previous studies.

The previous research has provided enough theory and empirical evidence to understand the importance of fiscal transparency, but they rarely pay attention to identify the relationship between fiscal transparency and public service quality. Moreover, the demographic features of a region can directly impact fiscal transparency due to the way they shape public demand for government and local policies. In these circumstances, a fiscal transparency study, which is site-specific is more suitable for China, especially to assess the effectiveness of public services through fiscal transparency. These are some issues that deserve further study.

The specific modification is mentioned in lines 56-62.

3

It will help to understand what is the novelty of this paper and if findings are completely new or somehow improve previous findings. It should be better explaned in Conclusions section.

The novelty of this paper is manifested in the following aspects.

Firstly, this paper presents an evaluation index system of public service quality containing 35 indexes from different dimensions of public service output and effect.

Secondly, this paper analyses the mechanism by which fiscal transparency affects public service quality. On one hand, fiscal transparency can improve the scale of public service expenditure by increasing public service welfare expenditure. On the other hand, fiscal transparency can improve the efficiency of public service expenditure by curbing the occurrence of official corruption.

Thirdly, the panel data model is used to empirically analyse the effect and mechanism of fiscal transparency on the quality of public service by using the data of 12 coastal provinces and cities of China from 2010 to 2017.

The specific modifications are mentioned in lines 445-448 and 452-486 in the Conclusions section.

4

In explaining policies that shpuld be adopted by coastal provinces and cities the focus is not on the fiscal transparency. Why? It shifts the focus to other measures. In my opinion it would be better to explain what fiscla transparency means to the author and how it is measured in the China Fiscal Transparency report. It will give the ground to the recommendations given by the author.

Based on the reviewer's advice, I deleted other measures, focusing only on fiscal transparency, and put forward the following measures.

Given the role of fiscal transparency in promoting the quality of public services, many measures should be adopted to continuously improve fiscal transparency. First, establish the fiscal information disclosure standards, formulate operating procedures for fiscal information disclosure through legislation, clarify the content, subject, time, method, and principles of the disclosure, regulate the disclosure of government fiscal information, and disclose it to the public to the greatest extent. Second, incorporate fiscal transparency into the government budget performance appraisal system. Due to the lack of a unified disclosure standard, there are large differences in information disclosure for local governments. Local governments' fiscal transparency should be gradually included in the performance appraisal scope so that local governments have enough initiative to increase fiscal transparency. Third, adopt diversified fiscal information disclosure methods. In addition to requiring governments at all levels to disclose fiscal information on the Internet, the role of the media should be used to disclose fiscal information to people through newspapers, radio, and television. With the time of Internet big data comes, public accounts, Weibo and other well-known platforms should be used to disclose financial information.

The specific modification is mentioned in line 473-486.

5

It would be better if author could better explain how the equation 12 was built, how variables and coefficients were chosen? It would cast a light on the results of the study.

According to the characteristic structure of panel data and refer to the existing literature, this paper constructs the following panel data model.

In Eq. (12),  represents the province and  represents time. The term  is an explained variable that represents the public service quality of the province  on the period of . The symbol  is the core explanatory variable, which expresses fiscal transparency. The symbol  represents a series of control variables. Control variables include official corruption, government responsiveness, government administrative efficiency, fiscal capacity, urbanization, and urban-rural earnings gap.  Furthermore, the symbol β and γ represent variable coefficients, α is the intercept term, is the individual effect,  is the error term, and  represents the logarithmic form of each variable.

 The specific modification is mentioned in line 330-334.

SL

Comments

Author Response

1

No more questions. Good luck with your further research.

Thank you very much for your comments. I really, appreciate your valuable time and effort for this review

SL

Comments

Author Response

1

Dear author, thank you for the answers. I'm completely satisfied with the answers and with the changes made

Thank you very much for your comments. I really, appreciate your valuable time and effort for this review.