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| Government Subsidies, Government Equity Participation, and Their Effects on the External Financing of PPP-Participating Companies |
| WANG Xiaoxiao, LI Shiyu, YUAN Cheng
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School of Economics, Peking University;
China Financial Policy Research Center/School of Finance, Renmin University of China |
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Abstract Public-private partnerships (PPPs) help develop local infrastructure and public utilities and ease local governments' financial burden. Since 2014, a series of related policies published by the Chinese government have prompted many companies to participate in PPP projects. Analyzing the effects of PPP participation on companies' external financing is important, as external financing is still crucial to companies' development in China. This analysis also helps to improve PPP design, contain government debt risk, and attract private capital to public projects.
In a PPP, a government and a company jointly establish a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to finance public projects. Government subsidies and equity investment made by state-owned capital (called government equity participation) in SPVs are the two main ways in which the government engages in PPP projects. From a theoretical and empirical perspective, this paper explores and compares the impacts of these two forms of government engagement on PPP-participating companies' financing costs and leverage ratio. The results show that government equity participation increases companies' leverage ratio and reduces the interest rate of bank loans through government guarantees. However, government subsidies do not have such effects. These results help us understand the impact of PPP project participation on enterprise financing.
The main contributions of this paper are as follows. First, prior models consider subsidies as the only way in which the government participates in PPP projects. This paper introduces government equity participation in the model to make the theory more realistic. Second, this paper is the first to examine the effects of government subsidy and government equity participation on the external financing of listed companies participating in PPPs. Finally, this paper complements research on the relationship between government financing and enterprise financing.
In the theoretical section, this paper adopts a general equilibrium model with capital externality. The government and companies jointly set up an SPV, which receives a subsidy from the government and loans from financial intermediaries to purchase capital. Financial intermediaries must pay a cost to observe the borrower's realized return, corresponding to the “costly state verification” assumption in Bernanke et al. (1999). The results show that a higher government equity share in the SPV leads to a higher government guarantee obtained by the SPV, which induces a higher leverage ratio for the SPV. At the same time, the government guarantee means that financial intermediaries are more willing to issue loans and accept a lower loan rate. However, the government subsidy does not affect the loan contract and thus does not change the leverage ratio and loan rate. The effects on an SPV’s external financing will be transmitted to PPP-participating companies. In this way, government equity participation in the SPV will increase PPP-participating companies' leverage ratio and reduce their loan rates, but government subsidies will not change the two variables.
The empirical section verifies these theoretical results. Combining data from the China Public Private Partnerships Center with financial data from listed companies from 2010 to 2018 in the China Securities Markets and Accounting Research (CSMAR) database, we use PSM-DID analysis to get the results. We find that government equity participation significantly reduces the financing costs and increases the leverage ratio of PPP-participating companies, while government subsidies have no significant effects on both. In addition, government equity participation has a lower positive effect on the leverage ratio of state-owned enterprises than on that of non-state-owned enterprises. In regions with higher marketization, government equity participation has a lower positive effect on the leverage ratio and a lower negative effect on borrowing costs.
Our results have the following policy implications. First, when evaluating the effectiveness of government expenditure on PPP projects, we should distinguish between government subsidies and government equity participation. Second, as an SPV obtains a government guarantee from government equity participation, we should properly use government guarantees to prevent debt investment in the name of equity investment in PPP projects. A reasonable government guarantee helps expand investment in public services. However, overusing the government guarantee may lead to an excessively high leverage ratio and operational risk. In addition, it may increase government expenditure on PPP projects and thus increase fiscal pressure. Last, we should standardize the implementation of PPPs through special supervision and performance evaluation of PPP projects, and eliminate irregular behavior such as promising minimum returns to private partners.
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Received: 14 October 2020
Published: 25 April 2022
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