The explanatory factors and outcomes of public expenditure on basic education in Thailand: a provincial level analysis

This research paper aims to explore the explanatory factors of public expenditure on basic education per capita across 77 provinces in Thailand during the year 2018-2020 to understand budget distribution on education by the central government. The factors included in the model of this study are economic factors, demographic factors, political factor, and geographic factors which were analyzed by employing fixed effect model of panel data regressions. Moreover, the paper examined the efficiency of educational spending per capita, and the governance factors measured by Integrity and Transparency Assessment (ITA) on the educational outcomes and their improvements with the assumption that higher public education expenditure and governance level can increase the educational performances. The results showed that the unemployment rate (-), population density (-), and special land areas (+) have relationships with educational budget on basic education per student. However, the correlations between educational expenditure and governance factors (control of budget misappropriation, procedure improvement, and open data) on educational performance are ambiguous and not robust.