Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: What Drives Subnational Borrowing Conditions? Social Spending and Government Size

政治学博士论文研究：是什么推动了地方借贷条件？

• 批准号: 1124261
• 负责人: Nils Ringe
• 金额: $ 1.2万
• 依托单位: University of Wisconsin-Madison
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-15 至 2013-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1124261&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

The world's governments are growing increasingly dependent on credit markets. This dependence is strengthening investors' capacity to reward or punish governments for their policy responsibilities, size, and other potential drivers of investor profits. This project examines sources of market punishments and rewards as they relate to local and regional governments. It addresses two questions. First, do international rating agencies penalize local and regional governments for spending on health care, education, and other core social service functions? Second, which governments borrow on the best terms: those representing large or small jurisdictions? The researcher argues that investors penalize governments for rigid social commitments: high levels of spending on health care and other politically sensitive social services. These commitments benefit large numbers of voters and unionized service providers and are correspondingly difficult to cut. This limits the fiscal flexibility that local and regional governments may require to balance budgets, causing investors to demand higher interest rates on public bonds and loans. But these reactions are offset by several national-level factors, including sub-national authority to adjust revenues and expenditures, national fiscal and economic performance, and the likelihood of national bailouts. The researcher also argues that, contrary to received wisdom, small governments often borrow on better terms than do large issuers. Although investors value the debt of large issuers for its liquidity, they also value diversification. Investing in the relatively scarce debt of small governments allows investors to diversify away from the more plentiful instruments of large issuers. But the relative advantages of size also depend on market conditions and their interactions with investors' liquidity preferences. Liquidity needs increase with market volatility, inducing flights from the securities of small to the securities of large governments. The intensity of these flights depends on investors' liquidity preferences, which vary across time and countries. This work tests these claims using a wide range of quantitative and qualitative methods and data, including broad cross-national analysis of credit ratings and methodologies, a more focused statistical look at regional borrowing costs in Canada and Germany, and semi-structured interviews with bond underwriters and investors. This work advances interdisciplinary research in political science and economics. First, it stands as the first broadly cross-national analysis of the effects of financial globalization on sub-national provision of social services. Scholarship to date has focused almost exclusively on the national level, while provision of social services has been decentralized to significant degrees. Second, this project advances research on economic agents' preferences over social spending. Third, the project contributes to work on fiscal federalism and sub-national bailout guarantees. Contrary to a large literature, it finds little evidence linking bailout guarantees to sub-national fiscal dependence, but it does find evidence linking guarantees to other factors. Finally, it advances debates about the merits of fiscal decentralization for big and small governments. This research makes several broader contributions. It sheds light on the sustainability of decentralized social spending in an age of austerity and financial uncertainty. It also enhances understanding of the links between public borrowing costs, government size, and the mark-to-market accounting practices increasingly prevalent across the globe. In addition, it illuminates the determinants of sub-national bailout guarantees.

世界各国政府越来越依赖信贷市场。这种依赖性增强了投资者根据政府的政策责任、规模和其他潜在的投资者利润驱动因素来奖励或惩罚政府的能力。本项目审查了与地方和区域政府有关的市场惩罚和奖励的来源。它涉及两个问题。首先，国际评级机构是否会惩罚地方和地区政府在医疗、教育和其他核心社会服务职能方面的支出？第二，哪些政府以最优惠的条件借款：那些代表大的或小的管辖区？研究人员认为，投资者惩罚政府僵硬的社会承诺：医疗保健和其他政治敏感的社会服务的高水平支出。这些承诺使大量选民和加入工会的服务提供者受益，因此很难削减。这限制了地方和地区政府平衡预算可能需要的财政灵活性，导致投资者要求更高的公共债券和贷款利率。但这些反应被几个国家层面的因素所抵消，包括国家以下各级调整收入和支出的权力、国家财政和经济表现以及国家救助的可能性。这位研究人员还认为，与普遍看法相反，小政府的借款条件往往比大发行人更好。尽管投资者看重大型发行人的债务流动性，但他们也看重多样化。投资于相对稀缺的小政府债务，可以让投资者分散投资，不再投资于大型发行人更丰富的工具。但规模的相对优势也取决于市场条件及其与投资者流动性偏好的相互作用。流动性需求随着市场波动而增加，导致资金从小政府的证券流向大政府的证券。这些出逃的强度取决于投资者的流动性偏好，而这种偏好因时间和国家而异。这项工作使用广泛的定量和定性方法和数据来测试这些说法，包括对信用评级和方法的广泛跨国分析，对加拿大和德国地区借贷成本的更集中的统计分析，以及对债券承销商和投资者的半结构化访谈。这项工作推动了政治学和经济学的跨学科研究。首先，它是第一次对金融全球化对国家以下一级提供社会服务的影响进行广泛的跨国分析。迄今为止，奖学金几乎完全集中在国家一级，而社会服务的提供则在很大程度上分散。第二，该项目推进了对经济主体对社会支出偏好的研究。第三，该项目有助于财政联邦制和国家以下各级救助担保的工作。与大量文献相反，它发现几乎没有证据表明救助担保与地方财政依赖有关，但它确实发现了担保与其他因素有关的证据。最后，它推进了关于大小政府财政分权的优点的辩论。这项研究做出了一些更广泛的贡献。它揭示了在紧缩和金融不确定性时代分散社会支出的可持续性。它还增强了对公共借贷成本、政府规模和在地球仪日益流行的按市值计价会计做法之间联系的理解。此外，它阐明了次国家救助担保的决定因素。