光華講壇——社會名流與企業家論壇第6714期

主題：Can Tax Credit Undo Capital Misallocation—Evidence from China's VAT Transformation Reform稅收抵免能否扭轉資本錯配—來自中國增值稅轉型改革的證據

主講人：西澳大學商學院 陳曉光副教授

主持人：財政稅務學院院長 李建軍教授

時間：3月24日10:00-11:30

地點：柳林校區格致樓918會議室

主辦單位：財政稅務學院 科研處

主講人簡介：

陳曉光，西澳大學商學院副教授，獲倫敦政經學院博士以及北京大學博士學位，澳大利亞國立大學稅收與轉移支付政策研究所（TTPI）、清華大學中國財政稅收研究所（NIFS）、中國人民大學財稅研究所（IPFT）等機構兼職研究員。研究關注稅收制度的經濟效應，獨立作者在Journal of Public Economics、The Journal of Law,Economics,and Organization、《中國社會科學》《經濟研究》等中英文主流期刊發表文章多篇。獲Gregory Chow最佳論文獎、中國首屆公共財政論壇最佳論文獎。

內容提要：

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.

本講座旨在探討投資稅收抵免對企業間資本配置效率的影響。大部分現有研究著眼于稅收抵免對個體企業投資的平均效應，并發現投資摩擦導致的投資非連續性對稅收抵免的效果具有重要影響。理論分析表明，投資摩擦對資本存量的增加與減少都會產生影響。投資抵免在刺激部分企業增加資本的同時，也促使部分企業向下調整資本存量。鑒于此，我們聚焦于具有不同初始MRPK（或TFP）的企業的異質性效應，以研究企業間資本再配置及其對總體生產效率的影響。基于我國增值稅轉型前兩輪試點改革以及2000-2008年工業企業調查數據，我們采用三重差分法（DDD），識別投資稅收抵免對企業間實際資本存量再配置和資本邊際收益差異的影響。結果表明，稅收抵免導致了企業間資本再配置和MRPK收斂，要素再配置提高了多種指標度量的總體生產效率。同時發現，如果回歸中引入比現有文獻更強的固定效應，則未發現稅收抵免對企業平均TFP以及市場力量離散度有顯著影響。這些發現表明，由于公司異質性效應會相互抵消，我們在研究稅收激勵對投資的平均效應時應持謹慎態度。盡管平均效應可能強度很小、方向不確定、結果不穩健。但得益于企業間資本再配置，稅收激勵對總體生產效率依然可能產生顯著影響。