地方债与中国经济波动:金融加速器机制的分析

Local Government Debt and China’s Economic Fluctuations:An Analysis of the Financial Accelerator Mechanism

本文在动态随机一般均衡模型中引入地方政府债务,揭示了其产生的新金融加速器机制。研究表明,地方债使房地产价格与公共投资之间形成正反馈,显著放大了中国经济波动。该机制基本遵循了金融加速器的理论范式,然而相较于标准的金融加速器,地方债加速器具有鲜明的中国特色。第一,地方政府以预期土地出让收入作为抵押发行地方债,形成独特的信贷约束,房地产价格上涨会通过放松地方政府的信贷约束导致地方债扩张。第二,地方政府的土地供给行为具有内生性,房地产价格上涨还会导致地方政府以地方债替代土地财政,这使土地供给减少并进一步加剧房地产价格上涨,从而在房地产市场内部产生额外的加速机制。第三,房地产市场波动向实体经济的传导主要藉由公共投资而非私人投资,地方政府的基础设施投资扮演着重要角色,并会对私人投资产生挤出效应。进一步分析表明,地方债加速器具有显著的非对称性和风险累积效应,而土地出让成本、隐性担保、影子银行等现实因素进一步增强了地方债加速器的波动放大作用。利用中国城投债发行数据,本文从实证上验证了地方债加速器的核心传导机制。本文认为地方债加速器对于理解中国经济波动至关重要,并对地方债治理与改革以及地方政府融资模式转型提出一些针对性的政策建议。

The financial accelerator creates positive feedback between asset prices and investment,and is a vital transmission mechanism to amplify economic fluctuations.As an essential asset in the economy,real estate plays a crucial role in the transmission process of economic shock.However,traditional financial accelerators tend to ignore the land finance of local governments in China,thereby underestimating the importance of the real estate market and making it difficult to fully reveal the impact of house price movements on the economy.Moreover,compared with the United States,China’s real estate market differs significantly.Land finance strengthens the role of the financial accelerator.Specifically,the rise in house prices relaxes credit constraints while increasing land transfer revenues for local governments.In addition,the bias of local governments toward spending on infrastructure construction will further amplify the self-reinforcing mechanism of house prices and corporate investment.Previous studies often assume that land supply is exogenous.However,local governments receive revenues from the land sale or use future revenues as collateral to obtain loans and continue to hold land.This paper introduces local government debt in a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model.Local governments choose land supply in a trade-off between land finance and local government debt.This paper shows that introducing local government debt can better illustrate local government behavior and its impact on economic fluctuations.First,local governments issue local bonds using land sale revenues as collateral,creating a unique credit constraint.Second,endogenous land supply amplifies real estate market fluctuations.Rising house prices lead local governments to prefer local government debt financing and reduce land supply,exacerbating rising house prices and creating a self-amplifying mechanism.Third,the real estate market fluctuations transmit to the economy mainly through public investment rather than private investment.Local government debt expansion amplifies output fluctuations by increasing public investment but squeezing out private investment.The contributions of this paper are mainly in the following two aspects.Firstly,this paper attempts to provide a theoretical explanation for China’s economic fluctuations from the perspective of local government debt.The local government debt accelerator can better match characteristics of China’s economic fluctuations than the traditional financial accelerator model.Therefore,it is a theoretical contribution with Chinese characteristics to the financial accelerator mechanism.Secondly,the local government debt accelerator reveals a chain of risk transmission:real estate market risk→local government debt risk→shadow banking risk→commercial bank risk.The debt risks accumulated by the local government debt accelerator are difficult to be resolved fully in the short term,and the risk transmission chain may still challenge China’s economic stability.Therefore,this paper has some implications for macroeconomic stability and resolving major risks.Overall,the local government debt accelerator mainly harms the economy and social welfare from two aspects.On the one hand,the local government debt accelerator may trigger systemic financial risks.Therefore,the key point of reform is to break the dependence of local governments on the real estate market.The systemic financial risks cannot be solved by tightening the regulation of local government debts alone.The recent bankruptcy of some large real estate enterprises has a particular warning effect.On the other hand,the local government debt accelerator reveals the crowding-out effect of public investment on private investment.Since the private sector has higher productivity than the non-private sector,the crowding-out effect leads to the misallocation of credit resources,which hurts long-term economic growth.Therefore,the central government should establish a standardized approach to local government financing while further promoting financial market reform.Internally,local governments need to clarify the criteria for local debt limits while shrinking government investment boundaries.Externally,local governments should continue improving credit resource allocation efficiency while promoting capital market reform and expanding direct financing channels for enterprises.