政府回应是否被定价：来自城投债信用利差的证据

Abstract

General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly emphasised the need to respond promptly and effectively to the demands and concerns of the public. However, achieving rapid and efficient handling of public appeals requires substantial human and material resources, while yielding limited short-term economic returns. This temporal misalignment between effort and incentives consequently weakens local governments' motivation to improve their responsiveness continuously. Providing effective immediate incentives is, therefore, key to enhancing government performance. This study examines, using extensive data from the Local Leadership Message Board (LLMB), whether the efforts local governments make to improve responsiveness are recognised by capital markets and translated into financing advantages. The findings reveal that improved government responsiveness significantly reduces the credit spreads of chengtou bonds. This indicates that proactive engagement with public appeals can yield tangible financing benefits. Analysis of the mechanism suggests that responsiveness lowers credit spreads by enhancing the organisational reputation of local governments and fostering a more transparent institutional environment. Further analysis shows that this negative relationship is more pronounced for messages containing complaints against government agencies, those involving complex public demands, during periods without central inspections, and in regions with weaker audit oversight. This paper contributes to the literature in three main aspects. First, whereas Western theories of government responsiveness are predominantly rooted in electoral competition, this study – grounded in Chinese administrative practice – takes local governments' quotidian responsiveness in governance as its analytical lens, thereby extending the theory of government responsiveness into the Chinese context. Second, unlike prior research reliant on static documentary sources, this study introduces dynamic behavioural information by focusing on whether local governments actively address public appeals, thus enriching the understanding of how chengtou bond credit spreads are determined. Third, existing studies have largely overlooked how the practice of government responsiveness feeds back to benefit the governments themselves. By demonstrating how such responsiveness generates immediate incentives through capital market channels, this study expands the literature on the impact and political economy of government accountability.