Les comportements d'emprunt des régions françaises. Quel degré d'hétérogénéité?

This paper provides empirical evidence of the heterogeneous borrowing behaviours of French regions, despite a common accountability constraint that forces them to balance their budget and to borrow only to finance investment expenditure (golden rule). To this end, we conduct a quantile regression analysis. The heterogeneity is very pronounced when the regions face a negative shock on debt, for instance a tightening of financial conditions. Our findings may be due to the factthat the Golden rule can be thought of as a « soft » rule if some local administrations believe that a financial rescue from the central government is automatic. Hence, in
the French case the bailing-out hypothesis cannot be rejected.