Official tenure and governance effectiveness of China's basic pension insurance system: An inverted U-shaped curve

OBJECTIVES: Based on incentive theory of motivation, this paper aims to estimate China's basic pension insurance's annual efficiency and inter-period efficiency changes from 2015 to 2019 and further examine the relationship between official tenure and basic pension insurance governance performance. METHODS: The DEA—BCC model was used to evaluate the operating efficiency of basic pension insurance in 31 provinces of China. And four panel Tobit models were constructed to examine the heterogeneous linkages between officials' tenure and governance efficiency in different regions of China. RESULTS: The results showed that there was an inverted U-shaped relationship between the official tenure and the governance efficiency of basic pension insurance. The younger an official was in his current position, the more apparent the inverted U-shaped relationship between the tenure of an official and the governance efficiency of basic pension insurance. We also found that localized government officials showed better governance efficiency of basic pension insurance. However, as the term of office of officials increased, the governance efficiency of non-localized officials showed a steeper negative effect. CONCLUSION: This study firstly reveals a significant relationship between the characteristics of officials and the operation of China's basic pension insurance system, which is a complement to the study of China's basic pension systems.