财政承受能力规制与地方政府隐性债务防控

Abstract

In the process of advancing Chinese-style modernization, improving the budget system and strengthening debt management are core components of deepening the reform of the fiscal and tax systems. This paper uses a regression discontinuity approach to systematically evaluate the impact of fiscal affordability regulation on preventing implicit debt of county-level governments. The study finds that the regulatory policy effectively crowded out local governments with weak fiscal capacity, significantly reduced the government's expenditure responsibility in projects, and laid a solid foundation for preventing implicit debt risks from both revenue and expenditure sides. However, the regulatory policy also prompted local adverse selection of government payment methods, leading to a decline in the efficiency of fiscal fund allocation. Further analysis shows that the efficiency-enhancement motive of regions with high fiscal self-sufficiency rates and the high investment intensity of hard infrastructure projects became important mechanisms driving adverse selection behavior. Heterogeneity analysis finds that the adverse incentive effect of the regulatory policy is more significant in regions with high-quality fiscal revenue and higher economic development levels, as well as non-demonstration and non-public bidding projects. In addition, to meet the regulatory policy requirements, local governments with greater expenditure responsibility pressure tend to adopt strategies such as raising general public budget expenditure or budget expenditure growth rate and extending project cooperation periods. This paper reveals the institutional incentive mechanism of implicit debt formation from the perspective of fiscal affordability regulation, provides micro-empirical evidence for the study of local government implicit debt, and offers further policy suggestions for preventing and resolving debt risks.