地方政府债务的非线性环境效应研究

Non-linear Environmental Effects of Local Government Debt

深刻认识地方政府债务影响后果是健全我国防范化解重大风险体制机制的重要参考依据,然而,当前对地方政府债务如何影响社会福利的认识仍然存在争议。本文将地级市政府债务数据与企业污染排放数据相结合,从环境视角考察了地方政府债务的影响后果。研究发现,地方政府债务对企业污染排放的影响是先抑制后促进的U型非线性效应。机制分析表明,当地方政府债务处于合理区间时,债务的增加有助于扩充地方政府财力,增强当地环境监管,从而降低企业污染排放;而当地方政府债务突破拐点值后,偿债负担的加剧增加了地方政府财政压力,地方政府为扩大财政收入或将选择"逐底竞争",放松环境监管,从而导致企业污染排放增加,这说明地方政府债务扩张具有财力与压力的转换效应。进一步研究发现,在突破拐点值后,地方政府债务对民营企业,规模较小企业,经济增长目标较高、经济发展水平和环保重视程度较低地区企业的污染排放具有更强的促进效应。本文结论丰富和扩展了地方政府债务影响后果的研究内容,并从环境视角为我国科学制定债务防控措施提供了参考依据。

Understanding the consequences of local government debt is an important work to improve the system and mechanism to prevent and resolve major risks in China.However,the current understanding of how local government debt affects social welfare is still controversial.This paper examines the impact consequences of local government debt from an environmental perspective by combining the data on government debt at the prefecture level with the data on corporate pollution emissions.The results show that the impact of local government debt on the pollution emission of enterprises is a U-type non-linear relationship.The mechanism analysis shows that when local government debt is within a reasonable range,the increase of debt is conducive to enhancing local governments’financial resources and strengthening local environmental supervision,thus reducing enterprises’pollution emissions.However,when local government debt breaks through the inflection point value,the debt repayment burden increases the financial pressure of local governments.In order to expand fiscal revenue,local governments choose to“race to the bottom”,which leads to the increase of pollution emissions of enterprises,indicating that the expansion of local government debt has a conversion effect between financial resources and pressure.Further analysis shows that after breaking the inflection point value,the local government debt has a stronger promoting effect on the pollution emissions of private enterprises,small-sized enterprises,and companies in regions with high growth goals,low economic level and low environmental attention.Our results enrich the study on the consequences of local government debt and provide a guidance for making policies to control government debt.