房价波动对地方政府债务稳定性的影响——基于隐性担保和支出效率的分析

The Impact of House Price Fluctuations on Local Government Debt Stability——An Analysis Based on Implicit Guarantees and Expenditure Efficiency

地方政府债务风险是当前我国重大金融风险之一,防范化解地方政府债务风险,是实现高质量发展和中国式现代化的必然要求。本文通过构建动态随机一般均衡模型,并将隐性担保纳入模型,在地方政府不同支出效率下,量化研究房价波动对地方债务稳定性的影响。本文发现,土地财政是房价波动影响地方政府债务稳定性的关键体制性因素;隐性担保和地方政府支出低效,均会加剧房价波动对地方政府债务稳定性的影响;政府支出效率提高,能显著削弱“房价—地方债”反馈机制。为维护地方政府债务稳定,必须遏制地方政府土地融资行为和对国有企业隐性担保,并切实提高地方政府支出效率。

Over the past two decades,the real estate market has emerged as a pivotal industry in China's economy,with housing prices continuously escalating due to rapid market development and fervent investment activities.This positive feedback loop,wherein housing and land prices mutually reinforce each other,has led to increased land grant revenues for local governments.Concurrently,local governments'financing through land sales has also surged,resulting in a burgeoning scale of local government debt.Recently,however,multiple pressures such as demand contraction,supply shocks,and weakened expectations have induced a downward trend in housing prices,thereby diminishing land grant revenues and local governments'debt-paying capacities.This has compounded the challenge of managing the substantial stock of local government debt accrued during the real estate boom.The interconnected mechanisms of housing price fluctuations,local government debt,and systemic financial risk,exacerbated by the implicit guarantees extended by local governments to state-owned enterprises and inefficiencies in government spending,have further complicated the local debt problem.If not addressed promptly,this issue could pose a significant threat to macro-financial stability.Against this backdrop,two pertinent questions warrant in-depth examination:how will the debt stability of local governments be affected by continued fluctuations in housing prices?And what roles do implicit guarantees and government spending efficiency play in this context?To explore these questions,this paper constructs a dynamic stochastic general equilibrium(DSGE)model encompassing representative households,heterogeneous firms,local governments,commercial banks,and other sectors,building upon the frameworks of Iacoviello and Neri(2010)and Liu,Wang,and Zha(2013).The model incorporates realistic factors such as land finance,local governments'implicit guarantees to state-owned enterprises,and expenditure inefficiencies,providing a theoretical framework for analyzing the transmission of housing demand shocks and their impact on local government debt stability.The model parameters are calibrated and estimated based on relevant findings from authoritative literature and macroeconomic data.The numerical simulation results indicate that local governments'land finance is an institutional factor affecting the stability of local government debt through housing price fluctuations.The implicit guarantees provided by local governments to state-owned enterprises exacerbate the impact of housing price fluctuations on the stability of local government debt and real output.These guarantees amplify the negative effects of housing price fluctuations on debt stability while improving government spending efficiency significantly mitigates the“house price-local debt”feedback mechanism.Enhancing government spending efficiency can effectively alleviate real estate market overheating and promote economic stability.However,while both increased spending efficiency and strengthened implicit guarantees can stimulate short-term economic growth,the former has a positive impact,whereas the latter may result in false prosperity.Based on these conclusions,the paper proposes several policy recommendations.Firstly,institutional measures should be implemented to curb local governments'land financing behaviors and implicit guarantees to state-owned enterprises and to establish stable sources of local fiscal revenue.Secondly,the efficiency of local government expenditure should be improved by adjusting its structure,optimizing resource allocation,and enhancing governance effectiveness.Finally,targeted fiscal policies should focus on short-term effectiveness,directing government expenditure towards key areas that drive high-quality economic development,thereby improving the efficiency of local government spending.Existing literature has adequately explored the impact of housing price fluctuations on local government debt,typically from a singular perspective.This paper offers several innovations.Firstly,it incorporates the real factor of implicit guarantees into the dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model,examining their role as“amplifiers”in the impact of housing price fluctuations on local government debt,thus better depicting the real characteristics of debt stability issues.Secondly,it investigates the mechanisms and effects of government spending efficiency on debt stability amidst housing price fluctuations,enriching current research and providing valuable references for policy formulation.Future research could further enhance this study by incorporating additional economic variables,such as the macroeconomic environment and financial market volatility,to refine the model structure.Employing higher frequency data could capture the immediate effects of housing price fluctuations on local government debt.Moreover,extending the study to other countries and regions would help verify the generalizability and applicability of the findings.