Fiscal transparency, public service provision, and criminal offense rates
基于中国269个地级市2014-2023年面板数据，发现财政透明度越高犯罪率越低，且通过改善公共服务间接降低犯罪，对政府效率低的地区效果更明显。
Based on panel data from 269 prefecture-level cities in China from 2014 to 2023, this paper empirically examines the relationships among fiscal transparency, public service provision, and criminal offense rates. The study finds that higher levels of fiscal transparency are significantly associated with lower criminal offense rates, indicating that information disclosure plays a positive role in reducing opportunities for corruption and strengthening institutional deterrence. Further analysis reveals that improvements in public service provision help decrease crime risk, and that fiscal transparency indirectly affects criminal offense rates by enhancing public service delivery. In addition, the impact of fiscal transparency on criminal offense rates varies significantly across regions with different levels of government efficiency, with the crime-reducing effect of fiscal transparency being more pronounced in areas with lower government efficiency. At the same time, the heterogeneity analysis of urban area size shows significant heterogeneity in the negative impact of fiscal transparency on crime rates between high and low urban area size regions. The innovation of this study lies in exploring the mechanism through which fiscal transparency indirectly affects criminal offense rates via public service provision.