地方政府债务的挤出效应:基于企业杠杆操纵的证据

地方政府债务对微观经济实体的挤出效应是当前制约中国经济迈向高质量发展阶段的长期性、结构性和体制性问题。迫于地方政府债务扩张对信贷资源的挤占,企业有较强的动机通过粉饰真实杠杆率来增强外部融资能力。基于城市层面的政府债务数据,本文研究了地方政府债务对上市公司杠杆操纵行为的影响。结果表明,地方政府债务扩张显著加剧了企业的杠杆操纵程度,可能导致企业存在虚假降杠杆的情况。考虑内生性问题以及进行一系列稳健性检验后结论依然成立,并且地方政府债务对企业杠杆操纵行为的影响在非公开发行债务占比更大、财政分权与财政压力程度更大的样本中体现得更为明显。进一步研究发现,地方政府债务加剧企业杠杆操纵的结果主要见诸于企业融资约束更强、债务结构更依赖银行贷款、预算硬约束和信息不对称更大的样本。经济后果检验表明,面对地方政府债务扩张,杠杆操纵提升了企业信贷融资能力,但也加剧了企业未来债务违约风险。本文的研究不仅从杠杆操纵的视角为地方政府债务的挤出效应提供了新的证据,也为积极稳妥处理地方政府债务风险、防止企业虚假降杠杆提供了有益的政策启示。

The Crowding-Out Effect of Local Government Debt:Evidence from Corporate Leverage Manipulation

The crowding-out effect of local government debt on microeconomic entities is a long-term,structural and institutional issue that restricts China’s economy from moving towards a high-quality development stage.Faced with the crowding out of credit resources by local government debt expansion,firms have strong incentives to enhance external financing capacity by manipulating the real leverage ratio.Based on government debt data,this paper investigates the effect of local government debt on leverage manipulation of Chinese listed companies.We find that local government debt expansion increases corporate leverage manipulation through credit crowding-out effect.The result is still robust after considering endogeneity,and conducting a series of robustness tests.And the effect of local government debt on leverage manipulation is more pronounced in subsamples with a larger proportion of non-listed debt and a higher level of fiscal decentralization and fiscal pressure.Further,we find that the effect of local government debt is stronger in subsamples with more financial constraints,heavily dependent on bank loans,with hard budget constraints,and more information asymmetry.To examine the economic consequence,we find that faced with the local government debt expansion,leverage manipulation improves corporate financing capability,but exacerbates their future default risk.Collectively,this paper not only provides new evidence for the crowding-out effect of local government debt from the perspective of leverage manipulation,but also sheds light on how to actively and prudently handle the risk of local government debt and prevent corporate leverage manipulation.