2008年金融危机后中国地方政府债务经历了快速增长的十年。中国地方债务增速过快、在政府债务中占比过高和区域风险较大等引起广泛关注。2015年新预算法后，经过债务置换显性债务得到控制，但隐性债务问题逐渐突出。地方政府债务治理体系的完善不仅是短期内控制住债务总额，在长期赖于调整和优化地方政府财政行为的激励和约束。本文从财政激励的角度对中国地方政府债务扩张的原因进行研究，并结合国内外地方政府债务治理经验，对不同地方债务治理模式的效果、适用性及影响等进行分析。本文将地方政府债务扩张机制分为“纵向信用担保”和“横向引债竞争”两类。纵向信用担保包括中央政府对地方政府的信用担保以及地方政府对地方投融资平台的信用担保。一方面，中央信用担保为地方政府债务扩张提供了制度激励，地方政府信用担保则使地方投融资平台在银行信贷和金融市场上获得相对融资优势，为地方政府债务扩张提供路径。另一方面，在晋升激励、纵向信用担保和“以地引债”等因素作用下，地方政府的“引资”竞争向“引债”竞争转变。两类财政激励及其交互影响共同导致中国地方政府债务扩张。实证方面，首先检验纵向软预算约束和地方政府“引债竞争”。结果表明，上级转移支付增加和地方政府竞争性举债加剧了债务扩张。此外，以地引债不仅推动本地区债务增长，还存在空间溢出效应。土地出让收入占比越高，房价越高的地区，“引债竞争”效应越强。进一步发现地方政府财力结构对一般债务和专项债务的影响存在差异。其次，新预算法及一系列治理举措有助于降低地方政府获得中央政府救助的预期，同时也对地方政府显性担保进行约束，但基于城投债券价格信息发现，市场对于地方政府隐性担保的预期并未显著减弱。实证表明地方政府预算内的偿债能力越强，该地区城投债券发行利差越低。债务治理方面，通过构建关于地方政府行为模型，探讨债务限额对地方政府隐性负债的影响。研究发现，为规避债务限额会导致地方政府隐性负债的增加，而增强财政透明度和审计力度有助于限制地方政府的预算外举债。本文还发现地方政府融资平台和政府与社会资本合作（PPP）两种不同的预算外融资模式对土地财政的依赖存在差异。最后，本文梳理国内外地方政府债务治理经验，结合本文的分析框架对地方举债权上收和下放的权衡，以及行政控制、市场机制和财政规则等治理模式进行比较分析，并进一步探讨地方财政规则的作用机制。
The subnational debt of China has been witnessed a decade of rapid growth since the financial crisis of 2008. Even though the ratio of public debt to GDP in China is under the level of recognized international alert, the rapid growth rate, the high proportion of subnational debt to public debt, and the uneven regional distribution have attracted a lot of attention from the market and regulators. With the implementation of the new budget law and subnational debt replacement from 2015, the debt brake measures are in effect to some extent. However, the implicit debt is soaring after the explicit debt under control. Actually, effective governance is not only to restrict the debt amount roughly but to adjust subnational fiscal behaviors through effective incentive mechanisms. From the perspective of fiscal incentives, this paper studies the reasons for China's subnational debt expansion and analyzes the effects, applicability, and impacts of debt management policies and tools.From the fiscal incentive perspective, this paper outlines that the debt augmentation mechanism can be distinguished into “vertical government credit guarantees” and “horizontal competition for debt”. Vertical government credit guarantees consist of two parts. The former is the guarantee of the central government to subnational government and the latter is the guarantee of subnational government to Local Government Financing Vehicles (LGFVs). On one side, under vertical soft budget, subnational governments are motived to borrow excessively and the guarantee from subnational government ensures LGFVs financial advantages to borrow from banks and financial markets. On the other side, official promotion tournaments, government credit guarantee, and land financing encourage subnational governments to change from original “competition for capital” to “competition for debt”. The interweaving of these two mechanisms makes subnational debt increase.Firstly, empirical studies provide evidence regarding vertical soft budget and “competition for debt”. The results show that increasing transfer payments and debt competition may cause the growth of subnational debt. According to spatial econometrical regression results, land revenue shows a positive and statistically significant relationship with subnational debt, combined with a significant spatial effect. It is further found that the higher the proportion of land revenue and house price is, the more obvious the effect of “competition for debt”.Secondly, the new budget law and a series of central governance measures reduce subnational governments’ expectation of receiving assistance from the central government. It also restricts the explicit guarantee of the subnational government to LGFVs. However, based on the information of LGFVs bonds price, it is found that the market expectation of implicit guarantee from subnational government has not been diminished. Empirical evidence shows that the stronger the solvency of the subnational government within budget, the lower the credit spreads of bonds issued by LGFVs of the region.To debt governance issue, this paper builds a two-period model of subnational government behavior to explore the effect of debt limit. It shows that subnational governments would take more off-budget activities to evade the fiscal restrictions and thus implicit debts accumulate. Better fiscal transparency and audit would mitigate these kinds of effects. We also find that land financing has different effects on LGFVs model and Public-Private Participation model.Finally, this paper compares methods of debt governance worldwide such as administrative control, market mechanism, and fiscal rules. After analyzing the effects of borrowing power devolution from the perspective of vertical and horizontal fiscal incentives, this paper gives some policy suggestions.
