地方政府债务对城市经济高质量发展的影响研究

The Impact of Local Government Debt on Urban Economic High-quality Development

地方政府债务是连接财政与金融政策的重要工具,研究其对高质量发展的影响具有重要现实意义。笔者基于五大发展理念构建了经济高质量发展的指标体系,通过采用熵权TOPSIS法测算得到的中国2006—2019年279个城市的经济高质量发展水平与利用收支相抵法估算得到的中国地级市政府性债务数据进行实证检验。研究发现:第一,地方政府举债融资有利于城市经济高质量发展,并且该结论通过了稳健性检验。第二,地方政府债务对于城市经济高质量发展的影响存在区域和阶段上的异质性。第三,机制分析发现,地方政府债务扩张能够显著提升产业结构高度化的量,但未能增强产业结构高度化的质,且不利于产业结构合理化和产业结构转换。第四,不同债务存量规模下,税收征管和地方举债对经济高质量发展具有非线性影响,进一步明确了债务存量规模的“适度区间”。研究结论对探索我国地方政府投融资体制改革和推动经济高质量发展提供了政策启示。

Local government debt is an important tool linking fiscal and financial policies, so it is of great practical significance to study its impact on high-quality development.This paper constructs an index system of high-quality economic development based on five development concepts, and conducts an empirical test by using the Entropy TOPSIS method to estimate the high-quality economic development level of 279 cities in China from 2006 to 2019 and the government debt data in China estimated by the balance of payments method. The findings are as follows: First, local government debt financing is conducive to the high-quality development of urban economy, and this conclusion passes the robustness test.Second, the impact of local government debt on the high-quality development of urban economy is heterogeneous in different regions and stages.Third, mechanism analysis shows that the expansion of local government debt can significantly improve the amount of industrial structure upgrading, but it fails to enhance the quality of industrial structure upgrading, and is not conducive to the rationalization of industrial structure.Fourth, under different debt stock sizes, taxation and borrowing have nonlinear effects on high-quality economic development.The conclusions provide policy implications for exploring the reform of investment and financing circulation system and promoting the development of high-quality economy.