Local Governments' Fiscal Pressure and the Dependence on Polluting Industries in China

Using a large, unique county‐level panel dataset for China from 1998 to 2006, this paper investigates the relationship between local governments' fiscal pressure and their preference for developing polluting industries. The results show that there exist fiscal pressure effects; namely, a positive link between the fiscal pressure faced by a county and its industrial tax dependence on polluting industries. We also investigate the heterogeneity of the fiscal pressure effects and find that fiscal pressure effects are significant only when local fiscal pressure is sufficiently high up to a certain point, and when there are more earmarked transfers. In contrast to the situation in east China, fiscal pressure effects in central and west China are more pronounced. Therefore, when dealing with environmental problems, policy‐makers need to take local governments' fiscal conditions into account.     

Economic policy uncertainty and industrial pollution: The role of environmental supervision by local governments

This paper explores the effect of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on industrial pollution using China's real-time pollution data and a novel news-based EPU index constructed by Davis, Liu, and Sheng (2019). Empirical results suggest that EPU can significantly promote sulfur dioxide (SO₂) readings in cities experiencing higher ex-ante fiscal pressure, and this effect is more profound during the daytime. Given that SO₂ is the main contributor to industrial pollution, and local governments have less incentive to monitor illegal pollutant discharges during the nighttime period, our findings indicate that rising EPU will harm the environment by motivating local authorities to reduce environmental supervision and thus increase industrial pollution. We also find that promoting regional innovation and strengthening external environmental regulations can mitigate the pollution effect of economic policy uncertainty.     

财政分权、空间外溢与区域经济增长

分税制改革以后,税收体系被划分为中央与地方两大部分,正式建立起以分税制为中心的财政分权体制。各地区的财政分权程度不仅对本地经济增长有直接影响,还对其他地区的经济增长有间接影响,即存在空间溢出效应。利用我国2005年至2018年31个省（市、自治区）的面板数据,运用空间面板模型,估计和检验财政分权对经济增长的空间效应。研究结果表明：各地区的财政分权不仅促进本地经济增长,还对其他地区的经济增长有显著正向溢出效应。     

Fiscal decentralization and environmental pollution: Evidence from Chinese panel data

China's environmental pollution casts a shadow on its economic success. Concerning fiscal decentralization, China introduced the rule-based tax assignment system in 1994. To avoid the structural change in underlying fiscal regimes, we use the provincial panel data during the period 1995–2010. We find that fiscal decentralization has no significant effect on environmental pollution as it is measured per capita emission of wastewater, waste gas or solid waste in system GMM (Generalized method of moments) estimation. Our results are robust when we use different measures of fiscal decentralization. We further find that fiscal decentralization has a significant, positive effect on pollution abatement spending and pollutant discharge fees, which indicates possible mechanisms for fiscal decentralization to help protect the environment.     

Local land supply and fiscal incentives for R&D: Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China

Whereas numerous studies have evaluated the effects of public research and development (R&D) support programs and R&D tax incentives on private R&D, little is known about local governments' fiscal incentives for R&D. In this study, we build a conceptual framework to clarify the critical role of local land supply in relation to fiscal expenditure on R&D. We treat the establishment of China's nine Land Supervision Bureaus in 2006 as a quasi-natural experiment, and run a difference-in-differences regression to identify causality. The results show that local governments allocate more fiscal expenditure to R&D in response to land-use supervision, which monitors illegal land granting behaviors, and this effect is stronger in cities where leaders have higher political career incentives and cities with greater fiscal decentralization. Moreover, we find that land-use supervision increases the probability and scale of firms' access to government subsidies for R&D; thus, enhancing regional innovation capacity. Our findings document that China's land resource is a curse for its innovation-driven growth as it impedes local governments' fiscal incentives for R&D.     

Infrastructure Bond Markets Development in Asia: Challenges and Solutions

To sustain economic growth momentum, Asia needs to continue investing heavily in infrastructure such as roads, ports, and power plants. Financing the region’s huge demand for infrastructure investments is an essential issue for policy-makers across the region. Against the backdrop of expanding fiscal burdens of Asian governments and more stringent capital requirements on bank lending, local currency bonds can serve as an alternative for infrastructure financing in Asia. In this paper, we use empirical analysis to identify the major determinants of infrastructure bond market development. Evidence indicates that an economy’s size is positively related to infrastructure bond market development. Furthermore, we find that Project Bond Initiative, a European Union initiative, contributed significantly to infrastructure development in Europe. The implication for Asian policy-makers is that deepening regional integration of Asian bond markets would help Asian economies to reach an efficient economic scale to foster infrastructure bond market and policy measures in the forms of credit enhancement would facilitate issuance of infrastructure bonds.     

Assessing Local Government Debt Risks in China: A Case Study of Local Government Financial Vehicles

Strong credit expansion in China after the recent global financial crisis has brought local government financial vehicles (LGFV) into the spotlight. Rapid growth of LGFV has triggered concern about local government indebtedness, banks' asset quality and, more broadly, China's medium‐term financial stability and sovereign risk. This paper constructs a unique firm‐level dataset to evaluate the country's local government debt. We find an uneven distribution of LGFV, which are concentrated in the coastal areas, and a deterioration of their debt repaying ability from 2010 to 2012. We use principal component analysis (PCA) along with multivariate discriminate analysis (MDA) to identify the credit risk of LGFV based on conventional financial variables as well as local governments' fiscal status. We also estimate the safe boundaries of debt bearing at the provincial government level. The estimations reveal more severe local government debt risks in the middle‐western provinces and higher risks associated with LGFV at the municipal and county levels. Although it is very unlikely that there will be a national debt crisis in China, the high risk of LGFV should be noted and effectively controlled by improving the fiscal transparency of local governments and reforming the fiscal system.     

财政分权、环境规制与绿色全要素生产率

理解财政分权体制下我国环境治理对全要素生产率的影响对于我国经济和环境协调发展起到了重要作用,使用我国285个地级市2008-2015年的数据建立财政分权、环境规制与绿色全要素生产率的中介效应模型,并采用两阶段最小二乘和空间滞后解释变量模型处理内生性。研究表明：财政分权引起地方竞争以牺牲环境为代价换取经济增长,导致环境治理不足而影响绿色全要素生产率,财政分权不利于绿色全要素生产率的提升。     

Local guarantees and SOE bond pricing in China

We study the changing landscape of credit market guarantees by examining the risk-pricing of the Chinese state-owned enterprise (SOE) bonds, which have experienced rising defaults across provinces from a zero record. Using primary market bond issuance data, we identify a province premium that captures the perceived local government support for local SOEs. We find that on average the perceived local government support is on the decline, while the subnational debt market has become more segmented since 2018. This evidence is found to be closely related to the divergence in local government’s fiscal space and the occurrence of SOE default incidents in the area, highlighting the adverse linkage between public debt and corporate financing costs.     

The role of the Spanish imperial state in the mining‐led growth of Bourbon Mexico's economy1

Colonial Mexico's economy experienced a long phase of growth during the eighteenth century. Around 1800, silver exports and fiscal surplus remittances from the colony rose to unprecedented levels. We study the contribution of the Spanish imperial state's policy to the expansion of silver production and the leading role of mining in economic growth and its fiscal implications. We find evidence to support a more favourable view of both the mining sector and the imperial state than that commonly presented in the literature. The interruption of colonial ‘mining‐led growth’ helps to explain the ‘lost decades’ for the economic development of Mexico after independence.     

市场压力、财政补贴与上市高新技术企业双元创新投资

探讨上市高新技术企业如何利用财政补贴资源实施双元创新投资,并进一步分析市场压力对财政补贴激励双元创新投资的调节作用。研究发现：(1)财政补贴对企业创新投资具有激励效应,相对开发式创新投资,财政补贴对企业探索式创新投资具有更强的激励效应;(2)资本市场业绩预期压力的增加会显著促进财政补贴对企业开发式创新投资的激励效应;(3)当企业面临产品市场竞争与资本市场业绩预期双重压力时,财政补贴对企业开发式创新投资的激励效应更明显。研究结论对于引导企业合理分配财政补贴资源、减少创新投资的短视行为、提升企业自主创新能力和竞争优势具有一定的理论与现实意义。     

Fiscal Decentralization or Centralization: Diverging Paths of Chinese Cities

If fiscal decentralization promotes growth, why do some regions decentralize more than others? This article identifies the growing divergence of fiscal centralization among Chinese cities and explains it in a public finance framework. It argues that fiscal decentralization and its economy‐liberalizing effect entail significant short‐term fiscal risk. The more a locality relies on uncompetitive business ownership for fiscal revenue, the less likely fiscal decentralization is to occur. This article compiles a dataset of 20 provincial capitals between 1999 and 2016 to test for the connection between a city's tax base and its fiscal centralization level. It then pairs two “most similar” cities to trace how fiscal security concerns drove their fiscal and economic policies apart. This article adds a micro‐level perspective to the literature on fiscal federalism. By pointing out the fiscal constraints confronting local governments, it offers a new angle to understand the different growth paths of Chinese cities.     

Unity in diversity? The creation of new local governments in a decentralising Indonesia

This paper evaluates the proliferation of local governments concurrent with Indo-nesia's 2001 decentralisation. Largely static for decades under the New Order, the number of municipalities (kota) and districts (kabupaten) has increased by half, from 292 before decentralisation to 434 in 2003. Most of the increase is off-Java. This represents a fundamental change in Indonesia's subnational administrative, political and fiscal landscape. We present a new dataset that elucidates the characteristics of these new kota and kabupaten, and review political, fiscal and economic incentives for creating new jurisdictions. We find that geographic dispersion, political and ethnic diversity, natural resource wealth and scope for bureaucratic rent seeking all influence the likelihood of regional splits. Since jurisdictional changes will affect local governance and service delivery, we stress the importance of providing an effective institutional framework for the creation – or future amalgamation – of local governments as part of a strategic approach to consolidating Indonesia's decentralisation.     

CEO experience and corporate financing decisions: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

Using the unique setting in China's economic transition and market reform, we investigate whether CEOs' experience regarding an economic boom affect corporate financing decisions. Economic booming, as a result of China's reform and open policy since 1978, affects individual risk preferences and decision behavior for those who grew up during the reform process. We find that Reform-and-Opening CEOs, who experience the reform and open-up era early in life, implement more aggressive capital structure policies and maintain higher leverage compared to Planned Economy CEOs. Furthermore, we determine that Reform-and-Opening CEOs tend to conduct debt issuance more frequently to cover financing needs as they can better deal with the liquidity risk of debt financing and confront the pressures arising from frequent monitoring by the debt markets. Using the stagewise regression, we find a cumulative effect of early growth experience. We also use the common trend test and placebo tests to deal with the concern that Reform-and-Opening CEOs pursue significantly more aggressive financial policies relevant to the systematic differences. Additional tests rule out the possibility that our results are driven by industry competition, state ownership, and educational ideology.     

“两型社会”经济运行制度研究——基于财政分权的视角

我国"两型社会"建设已由理论概念转变成现实行动,国家财政分权制度是促进经济快速增长和经济运行效率提高的一个重要因素。在财政分权与经济增长关系理论文献与经验研究进行回顾的基础上,分别从理论和实证角度证明:财政分权对经济增长的积极作用呈现边际递减;存在一个最优财政分权点(或者至少存在一个可判断的最优财政分权区间),与经济发展相协调,促进经济快速增长。在控制影响经济增长的其它变量后,得到68.58%是我国的最优财政分权点,这一结论也得到了现实的印证。希望这一结论在我国"两型社会"建设,经济发展方式转变和追求财政分权与集权的制度博弈中,给政府决策财政分权尺度提供有价值的建议。     

分税制改革、城市偏向与中国农业增长

分税制改革因导致中央和地方政府之间财权和事权的不匹配而增加了地方政府的财政压力,从而深刻地改变着地方政府的行为模式。当农业税费全归地方财政收入,农业对经济增长的贡献不断下降而经济增长又成为地方官员政治晋升的主要指标时,面临财政压力的理性地方政府会强化其城市偏向程度,从而损害农业增长。本文运用1978至2009年中国省级面板数据进行的实证分析表明:分税制下的地方财政压力对农业增长特别是粮食增长产生消极影响;非本级财政收入因缓解地方财政压力而有助于农业增长;地方政府对预算外资金的依赖则不利于农业增长。历史和经验证据支持了分税制改革强化地方政府城市偏向的观点。     

Policy Shocks and Macroeconomic Fluctuations in a Two‐country Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium Model: Evidence from China*

In this paper, we construct a two‐country dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model to investigate the sources of business cycles in China and the contributions of policy shocks in economic fluctuations. The empirical results from Bayesian estimation show that, apart from the traditional supply and demand shocks, monetary and fiscal policy shocks also play important roles in determining China's economic fluctuations. In addition, we find significant feedback effects between monetary and fiscal policies in China, indicating that policy coordination is an important feature of China's monetary and fiscal policies. Overall, these results not only shed new light on the policy factors behind China's economic fluctuations, but also provide new evidence that is helpful for understanding the policy transmission mechanisms in China.     

公共政策影响中国地区工业集聚了吗？——来自省级数据的证据

既有研究表明,政府政策对产业集聚存在显著影响。而在转轨期中国,政府政策行为涉及财税政策、产业政策、土地政策、公共服务政策,以及部分地区政府直接参与地方经济的投资活动等多样化内容形式。通过考察中国现阶段地区工业集聚呈现的新特点,即地区工业集聚差距呈现先扩大后缩小、地区工业集聚程度降低态势;探讨政府差异化的政策行为对中国地区工业集聚的内在影响;并基于2003-2011年省际面板数据予以实证。研究发现：不同的政府政策对中国工业集聚的影响不同;对外开放政策、产业政策、公共服务政策有利于地区工业集聚;财政政策对地区工业集聚存在负向作用;而土地政策以及东部沿海地区虚拟变量和直辖市虚拟变量,对地区工业集聚发挥的作用并不显著。     

生产性支出偏好与经济增长波动

文章基于我国1998-2006年的县级面板数据,分析财政支出结构对经济增长波动的影响机制。理论分析表明,我国地方政府偏好生产性支出的特点,将提高经济增长波动率;实证结果有力地论证了上述结论,即生产性公共支出占比提高10%,经济增长波动率将增加0.42%。稳健性分析发现中西部县级地区较东部地区经济增长的波动率更大。此外,我国生产性支出偏好对经济增长波动率的影响具有明显的顺周期特征,在繁荣时期,经济增长波动率的增加幅度将超过0.8%。文章的结论可为推进和完善中央与地方财政事权和支出责任划分提供参考和依据。     

What Do OECD Countries Cut First When Faced with Fiscal Adjustments?

Following the present scale of fiscal imbalances in developed countries, significant fiscal consolidation will be inevitable in the coming years. Fiscal discipline will require cuts in government expenditure, leading to trade‐offs between different components of government expenditure. In this article, we explore the relationship between components of government expenditure and government size during the period 1970‐2007 for a sample of 25 developed countries to shed light on how fiscal discipline might influence public spending composition in the coming years. Using the Pooled Mean Group estimation we find that fiscal adjustments protect functions that have both a social and productive character, such as education and health spending. In addition, the most productive spending, that related to transport and communications, is also isolated from budgetary cuts. This result shows evidence of governments reacting to the voter's increasing realization that reducing productive expenditures harms long‐term economic growth by striking a balance between utility and economic‐growth‐enhancing expenditure.