Latent but not absent: The ‘long tail’ nature of rural special education and its dynamic correction mechanism

The ‘long tail’ nature of rural special education (RSE) suggests that it simultaneously possesses the private nature of discreteness and the public nature of externalities, which can easily cause provision insufficiency. However, this mismatch may have a dynamic intertemporal correction mechanism impacted by different expenditures of supply sectors (governments and other social sectors). This paper uses different models and data from 30 provinces in China from 2003–2014 to analyze this dynamic correction mechanism. This research finds that different kinds of expenditures from different suppliers have divergent effects on this correction. Capital expenses (especially infrastructure construction) have significantly positive effects on the correction, but administrative expenses have significant dual effects on the correction. These effects may be caused by the various governance efficiencies and motivations of all stakeholders in RSE. This paper concludes that we should pay more attention to the accurate recognition and effective satisfaction of RSE affected by the governance efficiency and motivation of different suppliers to achieve this dynamic correction.