债务置换改善了地方政府债务可持续性吗？

2015年后实施的债务置换对地方政府债务可持续性的影响值得关注。为此，将债务置换作为准自然实验，以2008—2020年285个城市为样本，检验债务置换对债务可持续性的影响。结果发现：债务置换对隐性债务和经济增长产生了双重不利影响。其一，债务置换降低债务利息负担，拉长债务期限，虽然缓解了流动性风险，但债务置换助长地方政府道德风险，强化金融机构救助预期，导致隐性债务继续增加，总体上不利于债务可持续性。其二，债务置换产生明显挤出效应，也降低了地方政府债务支出效率，损害了经济增长，同样不利于债务可持续性。鉴于此，应重点防范债务置换过程中产生的负面作用，以提高地方政府债务治理的有效性。

Does Debt Replacement Improve Subnational Government Debt Sustainability?

The impact of debt replacement implemented after 2015 on subnational government debt sustainability is worth paying attention to. This paper takes debt replacement as a quasi-natural experiment, taking 285 cities from 2008 to 2020 as a sample to test the impact of debt replacement on debt sustainability. It is found that debt replacement has a dual adverse effect on implicit debt and economic growth. First, debt replacement reduces the debt interest burden and lengthens the debt maturity. Although the liquidity risk is alleviated, the debt replacement contributes to the moral hazard of subnational governments and strengthens the rescue expectations of financial institutions, resulting in the continued increase of implicit debts, which is generally not conducive to debt sustainability. Second, debt replacement has a significant crowding out effect, and at the same time reduces the efficiency of subnational government debt expenditure, damages economic growth, and is also detrimental to debt sustainability. In view of this, it is necessary to focus on preventing the negative effects of debt replacement in order to improve the effectiveness of subnational government debt governance.