财政透明度对地方政府债务风险的影响研究--基于政府间博弈视角

Research on the Impact of Fiscal Transparency on Local Government Debt Risks:Based on the Perspective of Intergovernmental Relations

在国家经济发展稳中求进的总基调下,地方政府债务风险问题的重要性不断凸显,文章旨在从提升财政透明度的视角研究我国地方政府债务风险控制问题。首先,文章构建了一个理论模型进行"内因"的研究,较为全面地考察了财政透明度对不同政府间关系引致的地方政府债务风险的影响;其次构建了一个基于省级面板数据的实证模型,分析这种影响的"外在表现"。研究结果表明,提升财政透明度是降低地方政府债务风险的有力辅助手段,随着财政透明度的提升,地方政府会迫于压力从多个角度规范地方债的风险管理,削减违规举债规模,优化债务结构和强化发债过程管控,在一定程度上能使地方财政的运行步入更加健康的轨道。

Under the general work guideline of making progress while maintaining stability,the importance and concern of local government debt risk issues are increasing. In order to alleviate the local government debt crisis,the central government has issued a number of important documents. Due to the active and continuous borrowing motives of local governments and the tendency to conceal debt behavior,the central government’s "top-down" macroeconomic control measures have little effect. Fiscal transparency is a broad"bottom-up" public monitoring tool that can effectively promote public supervision and restraint on government behavior. It has a positive and effective effect on controlling corruption,improving government credibility,and reducing debt risks.Firstly,this paper constructs a theoretical model based on game theory. The theoretical model uses the motive of local governments as the entry point to analyze how fiscal transparency will restrict local governments’ illegal debt-raising behavior. The results of the theoretical model show that:(1)With a single local government as the main player of the game,the increase in fiscal transparency will increase the expected cost of local governments’ illegal borrowing,thereby reducing the amount of illegal debt.(2)Taking two representative local governments with competitive relationship as the main players,the increase of fiscal transparency has a controlling effect on the illegal borrowing caused by inter-governmental competition. As the degree of fiscal transparency increases,the competing government will abandon the illegal way of borrowing and instead choose the legal way of borrowing.(3)With the central and local governments in the context of "Paternalism" as the main players,the improvement of fiscal transparency can strengthen the central government’s commitment to not help local governments,and encourage local governments to actively converge on illegal debt-raising in order to avoid the debt crisis.Secondly,this paper constructs an empirical model based on provincial panel data to analyze the "external performance" of the impact. The results of the study show that:(1)Improving fiscal transparency can effectively reduce local governments’ illegal borrowing impulses.(2)"Political tournaments" and "soft budget constraints" will exacerbate local governments’ debt impulses. In this context,improving fiscal transparency can effectively curb local governments’ debt impulses.(3)Improving fiscal transparency can encourage local governments to optimize their debt structure and optimize the bond issuance process.In the context of the current wide-ranging concern of local government debt problems,this paper aims to study the problem of local government debt risk control from the perspective of improving fiscal transparency.This paper provides new ideas for controlling local government debt risks,and also provides useful enlightenment for effectively promoting China’s fiscal transparency.