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。     

低利率环境下的政府债务成本与财政政策选择

在未来较长时间内,名义利率和实际利率可能保持低位,低利率压缩了货币政策操作空间,较低的财政成本和较高财政收入,意味着财政政策应该且能够更多发挥更大作用。在政府债务稳定与产出稳定的权衡中,应更多关注产出稳定。     

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。     

Debt, Death and Taxes

Does the level of government debt affect living standards and if so, to what extent? We quantify the impact of the U.S. federal debt using an open economy overlapping generations model in which consumers have long but finite lifetimes. A demographic structure allows fiscal policy changes to have different effects on different agents, and reveals the linkages between public debt, output and international trade. We find that reducing the debt has relatively modest impacts on aggregates, while reducing government spending substantially raises U.S. incomes and welfare. Therefore, this paper contributes to the current debate regarding whether U.S. federal government budget surpluses should be used to retire government debt.     

The social value of risk-free government debt

Can eliminating the stock of government bonds reduce welfare? When the government must raise revenue to pay interest on its bonds, the social value of government debt hinges on whether the benefits from greater portfolio diversification outweigh the costs of the revenue-raising efforts. A positive stock of debt is optimal only if interest payments are financed by an inflation tax, agents are not too risk averse, there is a government budget deficit, and the economy is on the bad side of the Laffer curve. Welfare is higher on the good side of the Laffer curve without bonds.     

货币政策与政府债务管理的关系：理论与实践新进展

近年来，许多国家的政府债务管理目标明确为在控制风险的前提下，使政府融资需求和中长期利息支付维持在尽可能低的水平。政府债务管理者优化债务期限结构的行为可能与中央银行货币政策目标方向并不一致，从而既影响货币政策的效果，也可能会阻碍政府债务管理目标的实现。文章对近年来政府债务管理与货币政策关系的表现及相关理论成果进行初步梳理和总结，并对优化政府债务管理的方法和前景进行思考和展望。     

Inflation and the Financing of Government Expenditure: an Introductory Analysis with an Application to Turkey

This article presents a simple framework to assess the consistencyof appropriately defined fiscal deficits with other macroeconomictargets, such as inflation. It also considers the relation offiscal deficits to output growth, real exchange rate developments,and management of internal and external debt. Finally, it considersthe implications of relying on interest-bearing government debtto postpone the adjustment necessary to restore consistencywith inflation targets. It demonstrates how the intertemporalbudget constraint of the government creates a tradeoff betweencurrent and future adjustment. Real interest rates and outputgrowth rates are shown to determine the terms at which thistradeoff takes place. The usefulness of this framework is demonstratedthrough an analysis of fiscal policy options in Turkey in 1985.     

房价调控、地方政府债务与宏观经济波动

在地方政府债务高企的背景下,房价调控能否使资本流向非房地产部门？房价调控如果触发地方政府债务违约,宏观政策应如何应对？本文基于中国宏观经济的特征事实,引入地方政府的土地财政行为,将房价变动与地方政府的偿债能力联系起来。研究表明,由于地方政府依赖土地出让和土地抵押贷款筹集收入,房价管控导致的地价下降会带来地方政府收入的下降,直接影响地方政府的偿债能力。如果地方政府债务不出现违约,那么房价管控带来的地价下降会降低地方政府从金融部门获得的抵押融资额,使非基建部门的融资成本下降,非基建部门投资和产出上升。而如果调控房价带来的地价下降导致地方政府出现债务违约,金融部门资产受损,使金融中介减少贷款和提高贷款成本,带来整个社会的信贷紧缩,经济中各个部门的产出大幅下降。进一步的政策分析表明,有必要在避免地方政府债务违约的同时,使用财政资金补充银行资本金等多种方式稳定金融中介的资产负债表,从而将房价调控对经济的负面影响程度降到最低。     

Sovereign risk,public debt,dollarization, and the output effects of fiscal austerity

The goal of this paper is to investigate effects of fiscal policy on output as a response to an external shock at different levels and currency compositions of public debt. Central to our analysis is the mutual relationship between sovereign risk and public debt on the one hand, and the linkage between sovereign risk and private credit spreads on the other. We show that fiscal austerity is conducive to real economic activity when initial government debt is high, its foreign currency share is important, and the link between sovereign and corporate spreads is strong.     

地方竞争是否阻碍了地方政府债务绩效的提升？——理论框架及空间计量研究

本文从举债行为策略视角考察地方竞争对地方政府债务绩效的影响。 首先,从不同地区间举债行为策略互动的视角对地方竞争如何影响地方政府债务绩效进行理论诠释,其次,在采用Global超效率DEA方法测度地方政府债务绩效的基础上,突破空间独立性假设,运用空间杜宾模型对地方竞争影响地方政府债务绩效的效果及空间外溢性进行实证检验。研究发现,在地方效用最大化目标导向下,无论是地方税收竞争还是公共投资竞争,都对债务增速产生了较为显著的正向影响和空间外溢效应,导致地方采取主动扩大债务规模的举债行为策略。与此同时,随着债务规模的持续增长,无论是地方税收竞争还是公共投资竞争,都将对债务绩效产生“规模报酬递减”的负向影响和空间外溢效应,尤其是公共投资竞争的影响效果更加明显。进一步地,如果考虑到可能存在预算软约束现象,地方竞争还将与预算软约束行为相结合,对债务绩效产生了“使用效率递减”的负向影响。本文结论为通过债务合理使用来促进经济高质量发展,防范化解地方政府债务风险提供了政策启示。     

Simple Monetary Rules under Fiscal Dominance

This paper asks whether interest rate rules that respond aggressively to inflation, following the Taylor principle, are feasible in countries that suffer from fiscal dominance. We find that if interest rates are allowed to also respond to government debt, they can produce unique equilibria. But such equilibria are associated with extremely volatile inflation. The resulting frequent violations of the zero lower bound make such rules infeasible. Even within the set of feasible rules the welfare optimizing response to inflation is highly negative. The welfare gain from responding to government debt is minimal compared to the gain from eliminating fiscal dominance.     

The Banking Exposure to International Lending: Regional Differences or Common Fundamentals?

The present study unveils the importance of regional characteristics of sovereign debt crises in Latin America and South East Asia. It proposes and empirically corroborates a refinement of the logit approach, for assessing sovereign risk, which draws upon a region‐specific parameterization—composite estimator. The analysis identifies some common features of debt crises that largely reflect domestic solvency, liquidity factors and, to a lesser extent, trade‐balance variables and external shocks. Nonetheless, heterogeneity effects and regional signals point towards the use of region‐specific models. Such approach depicts specific risk factors such as openness and debt burden for Latin America and reserves, output and government expenditure for Asia, thereby suggesting distinctive aspects to debt crises. Out‐of‐sample forecast comparisons further support the use of the composite estimator. The latter outperforms the simple pooled and random effects approach on the basis of various criteria, albeit slightly biased towards false non‐crises predictions.     

Monetary policy and corporate default

When a corporation issues debt with a fixed nominal coupon, the real value of future payments decreases with the price level. Forward-looking corporate default decisions therefore depend on monetary policy through its impact on expected inflation. We build a general equilibrium economy with deadweight bankruptcy costs that demonstrates how nominal rigidities in corporate debt create an important role for monetary policy even in the absence of standard nominal frictions such as staggered price setting in the output market. Under a passive nominal interest rate peg, the direct effects of a negative productivity shock combine with deflation to produce strong incentives for corporate default. A debt-deflationary spiral results when there are real costs of financial distress. Inflation targeting eliminates this amplification mechanism but full inflation targeting requires permitting the nominal interest rate to depend explicitly on credit market conditions.     

How Banks Price Loans to Public‐Private Partnerships: Evidence from the European Markets

This article presents the findings of a recent analysis of the drivers of credit spreads in project finance loans to public‐private partnerships, or PPPs, an increasingly popular form of procurement worldwide. PPPs are project finance transactions in which project output is a function of government policy in fields such as health, transport, and education. Because of the controversy that now surrounds the use of private finance in PPPs, understanding the determinants of the cost of debt in such highly leveraged projects is of interest to policy makers as well as originators and participants in the transactions. Using a large sample of credit spreads on debt extended to PPP projects in Europe over the past 15 years, the authors' study reports that market risk is the only significant driver of PPP debt credit spreads in a large portfolio of PPP debt; at the same time, technical risks appear to be diversified “away” by the structuring of the projects. Most important, and contrary to standard debt pricing models, factors like loan size, maturity, and leverage do not show up as significant determinants of the cost of debt in PPPs, reflecting a high degree of confidence by lenders that loans will be repaid or recovered. These results support the view that the use of project finance in PPPs is premised on effective risk management as well as confidence in the private sector's ability to manage public projects.     

International debt and world business fluctuations

The international transmission of real productivity disturbances is examined in an optimizing model with two countries each inhabited by an infinitely-lived representative consumer/producer. We analyze the dynamics of output, consumption, investment, interest rates, and net external debt. Foreign productivity shocks can have positive or negative impacts on domestic output and international debt, depending on the intertemporal distribution of the shocks. Transient foreign shocks are shown to be positively transmitted and lead to increased domestic indebtedness, while permanent foreign shocks are negatively transmitted and lead to a decline in domestic indebtedness.     

人口结构、财政支出刚性对地方政府性债务的影响——基于中国省级面板数据的研究

根据2012年各省级政府地方政府债务数据和1995~2013年省级层面地方政府债务水平的面板数据,运用固定效应模型、差分 GMM 和系统 GMM 模型,考量人口流出比例、老年人口抚养比、财政支出刚性对地方政府债务增长的影响。结果表明：人口流出比例越高、老年人口抚养比越高,财政支出刚性越高,地方政府负债率越高。鉴此,应严格政府举债程序,改变以户籍为导向的财政转移支付政策,理顺各级政府之间的财税关系。     

A modern history of fiscal prudence and profligacy

Drawing on a newly collected historical dataset of fiscal stocks and flows, we analyze the determinants of variation, both across countries and over time, in how fiscal policy responds to increases in the government debt-to-GDP ratio. The fiscal data comprise revenues, primary expenditures, interest bill, and government debt for 55 countries for up to two hundred years. The policy response (increase in the primary fiscal balance in response to debt increases) is found to be significantly weaker when sovereign borrowing costs are low, inflation is high, and potential economic growth worsens unexpectedly. These results are robust to political factors.     

The Advantage of Flexible Targeting Rules

This paper investigates the consequences of debt stabilization for inflation targeting. If the fiscal authority holds constant the real value of debt at maturity under strict inflation targeting, the equilibrium dynamics are indeterminate for a wide range of parameters and steady‐state fiscal stances. “Flexible” targeting rules that include a concern for stabilization of the output gap can restore determinacy of the equilibrium. Flexible inflation targeting appears to be more robust than flexible debt targeting to alternative parameterizations. The fiscal authority can prevent indeterminacy under strict targeting rules by committing to hold constant debt net of interest rate spending.     

Voluntary sovereign debt exchanges

We show that some recent sovereign debt restructurings were characterized by (i) the absence of missed debt payments prior to the restructurings, (ii) reductions in the government's debt burden, and (iii) increases in the market value of debt claims for holders of the restructured debt. Since both the government and its creditors are likely to benefit from such restructurings, we label these episodes as “voluntary” debt exchanges. We present a model in which voluntary debt exchanges can occur in equilibrium when the debt level takes values above the one that maximizes the market value of debt claims. In contrast to previous studies on debt overhang, in our model opportunities for voluntary exchanges arise because a debt reduction implies a decline of the sovereign default risk. This is observed in the absence of any effect of debt reductions on future output levels. Although voluntary exchanges are Pareto improving at the time of the restructuring, we show that eliminating the possibility of conducting voluntary exchanges may improve welfare from an ex ante perspective. Thus, our results highlight a cost of initiatives that facilitate debt restructurings.     

Government Weakness and Local Public Debt Development in Flemish Municipalities

The Weak Government Hypothesis states that government fragmentation leads to higher public deficits and debt. This relation can be explained by government inaction, common pool problems or the strategic use of debt that arise in coalition governments. Importantly, whereas government inaction models concentrate on the short-term effects of government fragmentation on indebtedness, common pool and strategic debt models imply that such effects will persist in the long term. We test these hypotheses using a large panel of data on municipal debt in 298 Flemish municipalities (1977–2000). We find that there is no long-run effect from weak governments. However, there is general support for the fact that the number of parties in a coalition has a positive effect on the municipality’s short-term debt levels–in line with government inaction models.JEL Code: E62, H72, H74