Evaluation of Capital Efficiency of Public‑Infrastructure Projects Based on Project Financial‑Cost Governance Theory

Abstract

Traditional efficiency evaluation for public‑infrastructure projects focuses on physical performance while ignoring soft factors of financial governance, suffering from imperfect systems and imprecise causal identification. Based on the Engineering‑Financial Governance Nexus (EFGN) theory, this paper uses panel data of 117 U.S. public‑infrastructure projects from 2011 to 2022. Super‑SBM‑DEA, Malmquist‑Luenberger (ML) index, Tobit regression and PSM‑DID models are adopted to explore the causal impact of financial‑cost governance on infrastructure capital efficiency. The results show that the average capital efficiency of sampled infrastructure projects is merely 0.723, and governance deficiency acts as the primary cause of capital inefficiency (Tone, K., 2001). The annual average growth rate of infrastructure total‑factor productivity reaches 4.1 %, driven almost exclusively by technological progress with marginal contributions from governance optimization. Audit supervision and joint engineering‑financial collaborative review significantly improve capital efficiency, whereas project scale and high‑debt financing produce notable inhibitory effects. This study remedies defects of traditional evaluation frameworks and provides references for optimal capital allocation and governance upgrading of public‑infrastructure projects.