Research On The Impact Of Fiscal Transparency On The Efficiency Of Local Government Debt Expenditure

Local government debt plays an important role in solving local government funding problems,improving infrastructure construction,and stimulating economic development.Improving the efficiency of local government debt expenditure has become the key to giving full play to the positive role of debt and realizing the sustainability of local government debt.The premise of improving the efficiency of debt expenditure is to form an effective restraint mechanism,the fundamental of which is to effectively supervise the government’s debt expenditure behavior.As we all know,"sunshine is the best antiseptic,and transparency is the best supervision." By reviewing the literature,it is found that there is little in-depth discussion on the relationship between fiscal transparency and the efficiency of local government debt spending.In view of this,this paper explores the effect of fiscal transparency on the efficiency of local government debt expenditure and its influence channels,which not only supplements and improves the theoretical achievements in this area,but also provides a new perspective for the next development of my country’s local government debt management.Corresponding reference suggestions are provided.This paper takes the panel data of 238 cities in my country from 2012 to 2018 as a sample,and empirically studies the impact of fiscal transparency on the efficiency of local government debt expenditure in China.Different transparency,different levels of regional financial resources,different years of education in different regions and different periods of heterogeneity,and finally from the three perspectives of debt scale,debt expenditure structure and audit supervision to analyze the influence channels.The study found that:first,the technical efficiency and total factor productivity of local government debt in my country are generally not high;second,fiscal transparency has a significant positive effect on the efficiency of local government debt expenditure.After a series of robustness tests,the conclusion still holds.And this positive effect is more prominent in regions with high fiscal transparency,low level of regional financial resources,and high years of education and after the implementation of the new "Budget Law" in 2015;third,fiscal transparency can control the scale of debt and optimize the structure of debt spending and strengthen audit supervision.Based on the above research,this paper puts forward corresponding policy recommendations in combination with reality:first,speed up the construction of fiscal transparency and promote the process of information disclosure;Second,establish and improve the debt management and supervision mechanism of local governments to improve the level of debt management.