Recent Theoretical Work on the Soft Budget Constraint
回顾了软预算约束现象的理论研究，该现象指亏损企业被政府或债权人救助，导致预算约束软化，并解释了其为何在中央计划经济中普遍存在，以及如何引发短缺等问题。
The soft budget constraint is a syndrome that was identified and studied by Janos Kornai in his analysis of centrally planned economies ( see, Kornai, 1980 ) . The syndrome is said to arise when a seemingly unprofitable enterprise is bailed out by the government or the enterprise’s creditors. In other words, the enterprise is not held to a fixed budget, but finds its budget constraint ‘‘softened’’ by the infusion of additional credit when it is on the verge of failure. Kornai viewed the soft budget constraint as a crucial ingredient for explaining the salient features of socialist economic performance, in particular, the pervasiveness of shortages. One interesting puzzle is why centrally planned economies have been particularly susceptible to the influence of the soft budget constraint; the capitalist world is hardly immune, as the recent financial crisis in Asia attests, but on the whole it has proved less vulnerable. Indeed, the very origin of the soft budget constraint and the mechanism by which it gives rise to shortages and other undesirable effects are also obviously important questions. Although Kornai’s work has long been well known and appreciated, answers to these associated theoretical questions have been hazarded only recently. In Maskin ( 1996 ) , I surveyed some of the initial efforts in this direction, including Mathias Dewatripont and Maskin (1995), which argues that centralization of credit can give rise to soft budget constraints because it facilitates the refinancing of