社会信用、刚兑信仰与地方政府隐性债务

防范化解地方政府隐性债务风险是当前我国亟待解决的重要问题。本文基于2007年至2019年293个地级市面板数据,研究社会信用对地方政府隐性债务的影响。我们发现:(1)社会信用下滑会导致地方政府隐性债务规模提高和融资成本上升。(2)社会信用通过影响市场金融资源供给和政府债务需求进而影响隐性债务规模与融资成本,但上述机制在有无“刚兑信仰”情境下存在差异。(3)对比新《预算法》和“43号文”出台前后社会信用对隐性债务影响的异质性发现,债务管制显著提高了融资平台的市场化程度。虽然政策前期金融市场更多呈现出一种观望态度,但违约事件打破了金融市场对地方政府隐性债务的“刚兑信仰”,隐性债务发行受到的市场约束力度显著增强。本文对更好地认识地方政府隐性债务风险、理解当前债务治理措施的有效性以及未来如何通过完善社会信用体系建设化解地方政府隐性债务风险具有启示意义。

Social Credit,Rigid Redemption Belief,and Local Government Implicit Debt

Credit is an important basis for debt financing. Since 2008, the scale of local government debt guaranteed by government credit has increased sharply, causing great uncertainty and systemic risk to the financial market. To avoid the “debt trap,” China implemented the new Budget Law and the Opinions on Strengthening the Management of Local Government Debt (hereafter Article 43) in 2014, aiming at restricting local government borrowing behavior through strengthened political accountability. Unfortunately, the scale of implicit debt guaranteed by government credit continued increasing. In March 2021, China reiterated that it is a key task to mitigate the risk of local government implicit debt and to enhance fiscal sustainability. Clearly, mitigating the risk of local government implicit debt is highly complex, and seeking a solution to mitigate this risk is still challenging at the current stage. However, research on local government implicit debt from the perspective of credit is far from sufficient.It is beneficial to start with credit, an important basis of debt financing, to seek a solution to mitigate local government implicit debt risk. To do so, we use panel data from 293 cities in China between 2007 and 2019 to investigate how social credit environment affects local government implicit debt in terms of both amount and interest rate. Our main findings are as follows. (1) The deterioration of social credit environment increases both the amount and interest rate of local government implicit debt. (2) These effects on the amount and interest rate stem from both the supply and demand sides of the financial market. The total effects vary in different scenarios. (3) The implementation of the new Budget Law and Article 43 has promoted the marketization of municipal investment bonds by gradually breaking investors' belief in the rigid redemption of these bonds, and local government implicit debt is more subject to market constraints in terms of both amount and interest rate. This process was slow at first but accelerated after the scattered technical defaults since 2017.This paper contributes to the literature in three aspects. (1) This paper extends the perspective of research on local government implicit debt to the scope of social credit. The literature mainly focuses on the behavior of local governments, whereas this paper studies the impact of social credit, government credit, and their interactions on local government implicit debt. Therefore, this study closes an important gap in the theory of government debt and helps enhance the understanding of the continued expansion of local government debt in practice. (2) The literature on local government implicit debt expansion is primarily grounded on a government perspective, whereas the interactions between the government and the financial market have long been neglected. This paper explores the heterogeneous effects of social credit on local government debt expansion from both the supply and demand sides and when the rigid redemption belief is present or broken. Through these analyses, this paper enriches the literature on the relationship between the government and the financial market. (3) This paper not only reveals the social and economic phenomenon that areas with low social credit have more local government implicit debt in China, but also helps answer whether the new Budget Law and Article 43 have been effective in breaking the rigid redemption belief. The above findings help us understand the risk of local government implicit debt and the effectiveness of various debt governance measures for informing policy makers.Based on the above analyses, we believe that improving the social credit system, promoting the marketization transformation of local government financing vehicles, adopting implicit debt management methods adapted to local conditions, and reducing the implicit debt demand of local governments are important measures to mitigate the risk of local government implicit debt and important policy paths to regulate the financial market.