全球视角下的财政透明度与政府债务:机制识别与现实启示

A Global Perspective on Fiscal Transparency and Government Debt: Mechanism Identification and Realistic Enlightenment

次贷危机以来,以名义利率为代表的价格型货币政策工具面临的零值下限约束使得逆周期调控的财政政策备受推崇,然而,过度积极的财政政策在稳定宏观经济的同时,却引发了政府债务规模的急速膨胀。本文从财政透明度视角对此进行深入探讨,研究发现,财政透明度的提高能够降低融资成本并提高投资率,从而抑制政府债务规模。机制识别显示,财政透明度对政府债务规模的抑制效应主要通过中介变量"投资率"和"系统性风险"实现,"通胀预期"亦能在其中发挥一定作用;异质性分析表明,这种抑制效应在发达国家和高债务国家更为显著。据此,在我国深化财政体制改革的过程中,须注重提高财政透明度,合理引导公众通胀预期,为逆周期调控政策的施行和系统性风险的防范营造良好制度环境。

Since the subprime crisis,the zero-value constraint of the price-based monetary policy has made the countercyclical fiscal policy highly popular.While excessive active fiscal policy stabilized the macro-economy,it caused a rapid expansion of government debt.This paper discusses the problem from the perspective of fiscal transparency.The study finds that the improvement of fiscal transparency can reduce the financing cost,increase the investment rate and restrain the government debt.Mechanism identification shows that the restraint effect of fiscal transparency on government debt is mainly achieved through intermediary variables of investment rate and systemic risk,inflation expectation can also have an impact on it.Heterogeneity analysis shows that at the national level,fiscal transparency has a more significant restraint effect on government debt in developed and highly indebted countries.Accordingly,in the process of deepening the fiscal system reform in China,we should pay attention to improving fiscal transparency and guiding the public’s inflation expectations reasonably,in order to create a good institutional environment for the implementation of countercyclical policy and the prevention of systemic risk.