题   目：Local Government Debt and Bank Credit Allocation in China

嘉   宾：许志伟，副教授，北京大学汇丰商学院

主持人：文一，特聘教授，上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时   间：2023年3月31日（周五）15:00-16:30

地   点：上海交通大学（徐汇校区）安泰经济与管理学院A511

内容简介：

China  launched a three-year debt-to-bond swap program in early 2015 that required  local governments to replace outstanding debts by local government bonds.  Since most of the swapped and newly issued local government bonds were held by  commercial banks, the share of local government bonds in commercial bank  assets surged from 2015 to 2018.  Under  the Basel III capital regulations, local government bonds are considered  relatively safe assets with low risk weights. A simple theoretical model shows  that an increase in the share of low-risk-weight assets should raise the share  of bank lending to risky projects and reduce the credit spread.  Furthermore, the sensitivity of the credit  spread to changes in risk weights should increase with the amount of  outstanding government debts. Guided by the theory, we study the empirical  effects of the debt-swap program on banking lending and credit spreads, using  confidential loan-level data from one of China's ``Big Five'' commercial  banks, combined with province-level government debt data and firm-level  balance sheet data in China's manufacturing sector.  Consistent with the theory's predictions, we  obtain robust empirical evidence that the implementation of the debt-swap  program has significantly reduced the credit spread for privately owned firms  (POEs) relative to state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and the decline in the  credit spread is significantly more pronounced in provinces with larger  outstanding government debts.

演讲人简介：

Zhiwei Xu  is an Associate Professor of Economics HSBC Business School at Peking  University. He got his Ph.D. from Hong Kong University of Science and  Technology. His research interest includes macro-finance, business cycles, and  Chinese economy. His work has been published at AEJ: Macro, Economic Journal,  Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Development Economics, Quantitative  Economics, Review of Economic Dynamics, and other leading Chinese journals.

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