经济增长目标与专项债务限额使用OA北大核心CHSSCDCSSCICSTPCD

As the largest incremental financial resources in China in recent years,local government special debts play an important role in the high-quality development of the regional economy.In the context of implementing limit management of local government debt,it is more realistic to identify the level of special debt expansion by the utilization rate of special debt limits.Considering that economic growth targets play a crucial role in China's economic development,local governments,as the makers of local economic growth targets,will be deeply influenced by these targets.Therefore,this paper constructs a systematic GMM model based on the hand-collected panel data of 283 prefecture-level cities from 2015 to 2021 and empirically examines the impact of local governments'economic growth targets on the use of special debt limits. The findings reveal that local governments'economic growth targets can increase the utilization rate of special debt limits,and this effect is more significant when these targets are implemented as rigid constraints and in the presence of excessive policy steps.This remains valid after using the instrumental variables method to solve the endogeneity problem,controls for the effects of the age of officials and changes in officials,excludes the samples of provincial capitals and cities with independent planning status,and replaces the explained variables to carry out the robustness test.Further mechanism analyses show that local governments'economic growth targets will increase the utilization rate of special debt limits by driving up the level of infrastructure investment,thereby resulting in a higher rate.Heterogeneity analysis indicates that the enhancement effect is more significant in prefecture-level cities closer to provincial capitals,characterized by higher competitive pressure for officials'promotion,and in the eastern and central regions.Therefore,it is suggested that local governments optimize their economic growth target system,foster their debt limit management system and allocation rules,and improve the investment structure and efficiency of the use of special bond funds. The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows.First,from the perspective of the economic growth target,it analyzes the reasons for the expansion of special debt since the reform of the local government debt management system,which enriches the related research on the reasons for the expansion of local government special debt.Second,it explores the reasons for the expansion of debt from the perspective of the debt limit utilization rate.The findings provide a theoretical basis and practical references for improving local governments'economic growth target system and enhancing the special debt limit management system.