中国地方政府耕地保护事业的绩效审计探讨

研究目的：探究审计在地方政府耕地保护绩效中的运用，为丰富和完善耕地保护制度提供新的视角。研究方法：公共受托理论与审计学相关理论。研究结果：（1） 地方政府耕地保护的绩效不只体现在数量规模的能控性方面，还体现在耕地保护资金的使用情况、耕地保护中的区域公平情况、耕地保护行为的守法情况等方面；（2）地方政府保护耕地实质上是履行其受托责任，地方政府耕地保护事业的绩效审计就是对其履行受托耕地保护责任绩效的一种审计；（3）基于公共受托责任构建了地方政府耕地保护事业绩效审计的评价指标体系。研究结论：地方政府耕地保护事业的绩效审计制度安排可以最大程度地显化委托人的监督权力，从而降低代理成本，增加代理人违约风险。

Auditing the Performance of China’s Local Governments on Preserving Farmland

The purpose of this paper is to explore the feasibility of the audit method on assessing the performance of China’s local governments’ preserving farmland behavior, and provide a new perspective to study how to improve current farmland preservation system. Public accountability and relevant audit theories are employed. The results indicate: 1） the performance of local governments on preserving farmland lies not only in controlling the total amount of farmland, but also in the expenditure of implementing and enforcing farmland preservation fund, the social fairness in different regions, and the frequency of illegal behavior in practice; 2） local governments’ farmland preservation behavior are essentially the execution of their public accountability, so the performance of auditing farmland preservation behavior is actually the auditing on the governments’ public accountability; 3） performance auditing index system of farmland preservation should be established on the basis of public accountability. The conclusions are that the local governments’ performance auditing system for farmland preservation can ensure the monitoring power of the central government, reduce the transaction cost between principles and agents, and increase agents’ cost on contract hazard.