地方政府债务置换与民营企业投资活力OACHSSCD

As a core endogenous driver for national economic growth,private enterprise investment plays a driving role in industrial and supply chains,which is a key to sustaining economic flows.To alleviate the crowding-out effect of government debt on the investment and financing of private enterprises,China implemented local government debt swap policies from 2015 to 2018.These policies converted the off-balance-sheet debt originally outside the fiscal supervision system into on-balance-sheet debt incorporated into the full-caliber budget management,thus driving the transformation of local government financing modes toward standardization and transparency.Clarifying the impact of debt swaps on the investment vitality of private enterprises constitutes an important exploration for optimizing the allocation of debt resources and achieving development during debt reduction. Based on data on local government swap bonds from 2015 to 2018 and from private listed companies from 2011 to 2022,this paper constructs an intensity difference-in-differences model to empirically examine the investment-promoting effect of debt swaps.The paper finds that debt swaps can boost the investment vitality of private enterprises,and this conclusion remains robust after a series of endogeneity treatments and robustness tests.Mechanism analysis shows that,on the one hand,debt swaps drive private enterprises to shift from informal credit occupation to formal bank credit,thereby optimizing their external financing structure;on the other hand,the debt clearance initiative under debt swaps helps unclog capital bottlenecks in industrial and supply chains and improve the internal financing efficiency of private enterprises.Therefore,debt swaps boost the investment vitality of private enterprises by alleviating both internal and external financing constraints.Heterogeneity analysis indicates that this investment-promoting effect is more pronounced for private enterprises with non-industry-finance integration,high market status,and weak supply chain network ties,as well as those located in regions with high fiscal pressure and low levels of marketization,and those operating in non-regulated industries. This paper confirms the corrective role of local government debt swaps in addressing resource misallocation in the credit market and proposes policy recommendations from four aspects:optimizing credit allocation,clearing up accounts receivable arrears,introducing differentiated policies,and improving the private investment mechanism.These findings not only enrich the relevant research on debt governance that boosts corporate investment but also provide empirical evidence and policy references to further unlock the policy dividends of debt swaps and enhance the dynamism and vitality of private enterprises for high-quality development.