企业的避税活动会影响投资效率吗?

Does Corporate Tax Avoidance Affect Investment Efficiency?

文章考察了企业避税活动对投资效率的影响。避税活动往往会加剧企业内外部的信息不对称程度,且会扭曲激励契约而引发代理问题;而信息不对称和代理问题是导致企业非效率投资的重要原因。因此,本文预期企业的避税程度越高,投资效率越低。采用我国上市公司1999～2010年的数据,研究发现:企业的避税程度与非效率投资额显著正相关,且这种正相关关系主要表现为避税引发了过度投资。进一步研究发现,完善的公司治理机制可以抑制避税对过度投资的影响。本文的结论补充和拓展了新近关于避税代理观的研究,也对企业的财务决策和税务部门的征管工作有重要启示。

This paper investigates the effect of corporate tax avoidance on investment efficiency. Since tax avoidance will increase the information asymmetry between corporate insiders and outside investors,and distort managerial incentive contracts,we predict that tax avoidance should lead to lower investment efficiency. Using a sample of Chinese listed companies during the period of 1999 ～ 2010,we find that corporate tax avoidance is negatively related to investment efficiency. Moreover,the negative relationship is more pronounced for the over-investment sub-sample. We further find that good corporate governance can alleviate the positive effect of tax avoidance on over-investment. Conclusions of this paper extend the emerging literature on the agency perspective of tax avoidance,and have serious policy implication to tax collection.