财政状况与地方债务规模——基于转移支付视角的新发现

Fiscal Condition and Local Debt Scale:New Findings Based on the Perspective of Transfer Payments

理论分析认为地方政府财政收不抵支是政府举债的重要原因,但由于地方政府债务数据不易获得,而且财政状况与债务规模之间往往存在循环因果关系等,上述理论在中国是否成立,缺乏实证检验。基于2004-2009年321个地级市数据,本文首次使用政府间转移支付作为地方政府财政盈亏的工具变量,有效控制了财政状况与债务规模之间的内生性关联,实证分析了地方政府财政缺口与地方债务规模之间的关系。研究结果显示,地方政府财政状况与地方债务规模之间的关系出乎常识认知,两者之间呈现显著负向关系:即财政缺口越大,地方债务规模的增长越缓慢。这说明,基层政府财政困难导致地方债务规模快速膨胀的传统观点有待商榷,地方债务的持续扩张另有其因。

Fiscal income over expenditure is the direct reason of the local government debt in above theoretical analysis. Because of the lack of data on local government debt and a two-way causal relationship between fiscal condition and local debt scale, the empirical test of above theoretical analysis is deficient. Based on the data of prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2009, to control for the endogeneity between fiscal condition and local debt scale, we use transfer payment as fiscal deficit＇s instrument variable for the first time and empirically analyze that whether local fiscal gap is the reason of the local debt or not. Our theoretical result shows that the relationship between fiscal condition and local debt scale is contrary to common sense. There is a negative relationship that the bigger the fiscal gap is, the slower the scale expansion of local debt is. This result means that the traditional view which fiscal difficulty of grass-roots government will cause the expansion of local debt is questionable, and there are other reasons for the expansion of local debt.