地方政府债务治理改革与企业人力资本升级

Reform in Local Government Debt Governance and Human Capital Upgrading

地方政府债务是我国地方政府提供公共服务和引导地区经济发展的重要资金来源,合理的政府债务治理模式对于微观企业正常经营和经济社会高质量发展至关重要。本文借助2015年施行的新《预算法》这一外生政策冲击,通过强度双重差分法检验地方政府债务治理改革对企业人力资本结构的影响。研究发现:地方政府债务治理改革能够缓解企业融资约束和提升企业风险承担能力,进而推动企业人力资本升级,表现为高技能劳动者占比上升;进一步研究发现,该优化作用在议价能力较低、所处地区市场化程度较高的样本企业中更为突出,人力资本得以优化升级的企业的创新能力和生产效率均得到明显提升。本文研究不仅为地方政府债务管理体制改革提供了微观证据支持,还为如何以“有为政府”方式推动企业人力资本升级提供了经验借鉴和政策参考。

Human capital is the first resource for economic and social development,and high-level human capital is the core element to promote enterprise value creation and industrial structure upgrading.As China enters the stage of high-quality development,all industries have put forward a more urgent demand for high-level human capital.However,the proportion of highly skilled human capital in China is relatively low,and the mismatch between the human capital structure and the new development concept has seriously hindered the improvement of the overall supply efficiency and quality of China’s economy.Local government debt is an important source of funding for local governments to provide public services and guide regional economic development,and a reasonable government debt governance model is crucial to the normal operation of micro enterprises and high-quality economic and social development.How to promote the optimization and upgrading of human capital and increase the proportion of skilled labor in enterprises by“promising government”is a research topic of great importance in the modernization of national governance capacity.On August 31,2014,the 10 th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 12 th National People’s Congress decided to amend the Budget Law of the People’s Republic of China,and the new Budget Law came into force on January 1,2015.The new Budget Law strictly regulates local governments’debt financing based on the reform idea of“opening the front door,blocking the back door and building a wall”,and clearly points out that local governments can only borrow debt by issuing government bonds,and all of them are included in the budget management and subject to the review and supervision of the National People’s Congress,which fundamentally adjusts the way local governments raise debt.The reform of local debt governance guided by the new Budget Law can effectively enhance the government’s debt control capacity by regulating local governments’debt raising and financing behaviors according to the law,promote the transformation of government functions and speed up the construction process of“promising government”from the level of fiscal and financial reform,thus providing an important institutional guarantee for optimizing the credit environment and business environment of micro-entities.This paper examines the impact of local government debt governance reform on enterprise human capital by using the exogenous policy shock of the Budget Law of the People’s Republic of China(2014 Amendment),which came into effect in 2015,and dividing the treatment and control groups according to the proportion of interest-bearing debt balance of local financing platforms to regional GDP.The study finds that local government debt governance reform can significantly promote the optimization of enterprise human capital upgrading,and the findings remain robust after a series of robustness tests;mechanism tests indicate that local debt governance reform can alleviate enterprise financing constraints and improve risk-taking levels,increase the demand for hiring highly skilled personnel while improving the ability of enterprises to pay skill premiums,and thus optimize the structure of enterprise human capital.Further study finds that the aforementioned optimization effect is more prominent in the sample firms with lower bargaining power and higher marketization in the region,and the innovation ability and productivity of the firms whose human capital is optimized and upgraded are significantly improved.This paper provides a useful extension to the academic research on human capital and local government debt management.This paper provides theoretical and practical references for optimizing the human capital structure of enterprises from the perspective of“promising government”.This paper shows that the reform of the local government debt management system centered on the new Budget Law of 2015 has good microeconomic effects,which not only supports the active exploration of the innovative fiscal and financial system reform by the policy makers in the context of high-quality development,but also provides a useful supplement to the academic research on enterprise human capital and local government debt management.