光华讲坛——社会名流与企业家论坛第6714期

主题：Can Tax Credit Undo Capital Misallocation—Evidence from China's VAT Transformation Reform税收抵免能否扭转资本错配—来自中国增值税转型改革的证据

主讲人：西澳大学商学院 陈晓光副教授

主持人：财政税务学院院长 李建军教授

时间：3月24日10:00-11:30

地点：柳林校区格致楼918会议室

主办单位：财政税务学院 科研处

主讲人简介：

陈晓光，西澳大学商学院副教授，获伦敦政经学院博士以及北京大学博士学位，澳大利亚国立大学税收与转移支付政策研究所（TTPI）、清华大学中国财政税收研究所（NIFS）、中国人民大学财税研究所（IPFT）等机构兼职研究员。研究关注税收制度的经济效应，独立作者在Journal of Public Economics、The Journal of Law,Economics,and Organization、《中国社会科学》《经济研究》等中英文主流期刊发表文章多篇。获Gregory Chow最佳论文奖、中国首届公共财政论坛最佳论文奖。

内容提要：

We investigate the effect of investment tax credit on allocative efficiency of capital across firms. Most existing studies examined the average effect on investment of individual firms, and found that the lumpy investment caused by investment frictions plays an important role in that average effect. We argue that the investment frictions should affect both upward and downward adjustment in capital in a standard model of physical capital market with frictions. Tax credit may not only incentivize investment of some firms but also boost dis-investment of others. Motivated by that argument, we focus on the heterogeneous effect across firms characterised by their initial MRPK (or TFP) in order to examine the capital reallocation. Based on the first two pilots of VAT transformation reform in China and firm data from Annual Survey of Industrial Production conducted (2000-2008), we employ the Difference-in-Difference-in-Differences (DDD) to identify the effect of investment tax credit on firms' real capital stock and marginal revenue product of capital (MRPK). The results suggest that the tax credit reform led to reallocation of capital and convergence in MRPK across firms. The reallocation improves the aggregate efficiency measured by various indicators. However, regressions including stronger fixed effects do not show significant effects either on firms' average TFP or on dispersion in firms' market power. The finding suggests that we should be cautious about the average effect of tax incentives on investment since it could be small, ambiguous, or not robust due to opposing heterogeneous effects across firms; while that the effect on the aggregate efficiency could be salient thanks to the capital reallocation.

本讲座旨在探讨投资税收抵免对企业间资本配置效率的影响。大部分现有研究着眼于税收抵免对个体企业投资的平均效应，并发现投资摩擦导致的投资非连续性对税收抵免的效果具有重要影响。理论分析表明，投资摩擦对资本存量的增加与减少都会产生影响。投资抵免在刺激部分企业增加资本的同时，也促使部分企业向下调整资本存量。鉴于此，我们聚焦于具有不同初始MRPK（或TFP）的企业的异质性效应，以研究企业间资本再配置及其对总体生产效率的影响。基于我国增值税转型前两轮试点改革以及2000-2008年工业企业调查数据，我们采用三重差分法（DDD），识别投资税收抵免对企业间实际资本存量再配置和资本边际收益差异的影响。结果表明，税收抵免导致了企业间资本再配置和MRPK收敛，要素再配置提高了多种指标度量的总体生产效率。同时发现，如果回归中引入比现有文献更强的固定效应，则未发现税收抵免对企业平均TFP以及市场力量离散度有显著影响。这些发现表明，由于公司异质性效应会相互抵消，我们在研究税收激励对投资的平均效应时应持谨慎态度。尽管平均效应可能强度很小、方向不确定、结果不稳健。但得益于企业间资本再配置，税收激励对总体生产效率依然可能产生显著影响。