弱化政治关联降低城投债发行利差了吗?

Does the Weakening of Political Connections Reduce the Issuance Spread of Municipal Investment Bonds?

本文运用网络爬虫技术和文本识别方法,构建了2012—2017年地方融资平台政治关联数据库,采用多期双重差分法探究弱化政治关联对城投债发行利差的影响。研究结果表明,弱化政治关联能够显著降低城投债发行利差,并且该结果在一系列稳健性检验和内生性处理后依然成立。机制检验发现,弱化政治关联主要通过提高投资效率和缓解政策性负担降低城投债发行利差,亦有证据表明地方政府正逐步减少对地方融资平台的补贴,但是政策效应存在滞后性。与理论预期相反,弱化政治关联未能显著降低地方融资平台的破产风险,甚至在转型当期降低了地方融资平台的经营绩效。进一步分析发现,政策效应在不同经营行业的地方融资平台、不同财政透明度和政府干预程度的外部环境下存在显著的异质性。本文从实证角度对地方融资平台市场化转型的政策效应作了初步探索,为防控地方隐性债务风险、规范地方融资平台发展提供经验借鉴。

Using the transition of local government financing vehicles(LGFVs)as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper exploits the multi-period difference-in-differences(DID) method to identify the causal effect and mechanisms of the weakening of political connections on the issuance spread of municipal investment bonds.We use web scraping technology and text mining to build a database of political connections from 2012 to 2017.The results are as follows.The weakening of political connections can significantly reduce the spread of municipal investment bonds, and this conclusion still holds in the parallel trend hypothesis test and robustness tests.The mechanism test shows that the weakening of political connections mainly reduces the interest rate spread of municipal investment bonds by improving investment efficiency and alleviating policy burdens.There is also evidence that local governments are gradually reducing subsidy support for local financing platforms, but the policy effect is lagging behind.Contrary to theoretical expectations, the weakening of political connections cannot significantly reduce the bankruptcy risk of local financing platforms, and even worsens the operating performance of local financing platforms during the current transition period.Further analysis finds that the policy effect has significant heterogeneity in the external environments of local financing platforms in different operating industries, fiscal transparency and government intervention levels.This paper makes a preliminary exploration of the policy effect of the market-oriented transformation of local financing platforms from an empirical perspective, and provides experience and reference for preventing and controlling local hidden debt risks and regulating the development of local financing platforms.