Abstract: By taking the data matching China’s non-state-owned listed enterprises and the provincial macro level as the research samples, this paper analyzes the impact mechanism of local government debt on the investment efficiency of non-state-owned enterprises. The findings show that the expansion of the size of local government debt has reduced the short-term borrowing scale of non-state-owned enterprises, which has intensified the financing constraints of non-state-owned enterprises, thereby reducing the investment efficiency of non-state-owned enterprises. This is mainly reflected in the intensified inadequate investment to the non-state-owned enterprises. Moreover, local government borrowing has a greater negative impact on the investment efficiency of the non-state-owned enterprises with inadequate internal capital. This conclusion provides a micro foundation for the influence of local government debt on the local economic growth quality; at the same time, it also provides theoretical and empirical evidences for the current central government to strictly control the local government debt increment. Therefore, it is necessary to limit the size of local government implicit debt, optimize the local government debt financing structure, transform local government functions, and reshape local government incentive mechanisms, so as to give an active play to the local governments in promoting high-quality economic development.

Key words: local government debt; non-state-owned enterprises; investment efficiency; high-quality development