Toward a Dynamic-Balance View of Efficiency in Regional Pension Pooling: Conceptualization, Indicator Design, and an Illustrative Case from Yingkou, China

Abstract

This article develops a dynamic-balance view of efficiency for the analysis of regional pension pooling and uses the Yingkou case to illustrate its analytical value. Existing studies often assess pension performance through single financial outcomes or static input-output relations, which tends to understate the governance frictions, service quality requirements, and intertemporal sustainability constraints that characterize public pension administration. Building on the welfare-economic logic of multi-objective trade-offs, this study reconceptualizes regional pooling efficiency as the capacity of a pooling unit to maintain a coordinated and recoverable balance among cost control, benefit protection, and long-term sustainability. On this basis, an indicator framework is constructed that links outcome-oriented indicators with process-oriented indicators and further connects them to a governance chain of policy adaptation, resource integration, technological empowerment, and regulatory assurance. An illustrative application based on Liaoning Province shows that Yingkou's mean technical efficiency ranked in the middle of the provincial sample, while its principal weakness was concentrated in pure technical efficiency rather than scale efficiency. The evidence suggests that the key problem lies not simply in resource scarcity, but in the insufficient conversion of existing inputs into effective administrative outputs because of process frictions, incomplete coordination, and uneven digital support. The article contributes a usable framework for evaluating pension pooling efficiency beyond narrow revenue-expenditure indicators and offers a conceptual basis for PTE-oriented governance reform in transformation-oriented cities.