税收激励与企业创新——基于增值税转型改革的“准自然实验”

Tax Incentive and Firm Innovation ——Evidence from China’s Value-Added Tax Reform

本文基于“准自然实验”构建双重差分的识别策略,对我国2004-2009年间在不同地区和不同行业逐步开展的增值税转型改革对企业创新的影响进行了实证分析。理论上,增值税转型会通过增加企业可支配的现金和降低创新成本促进企业创新。我们的实证结论与理论预期一致:企业的创新产出(企业专利)在增值税转型改革之后显著增加;进一步,我们采用中介效应检验,发现增值税转型改革通过增加企业可支配的现金流和降低创新设备投入成本两条路径促进了企业创新。最后,我们发现增值税转型改革对创新产出的正面影响,对那些外部融资依赖程度更高,以及改革之后固定资产升级幅度更大的企业更显著。本文印证了税收激励对企业创新的促进作用,从而具有重要的理论贡献。本文也为供给侧改革和新一轮的增值税改革提供了重要的政策启示。

This paper tests the impact of China's value-added tax reform that is staggered adopted in different regions and industries between 2004 and 2009 on corporate innovation by using a quasi -experiment design and the difference - in-differences approach. Theoretically, the value-added tax re form can motivate corporate innovation by increasing firm's disposable cash and decreasing cost of innovation investment. Our empirical results are consist ent with the theoretical predictions. Specially, we find that the value-added tax reform has a positive and causal effect on corporate innovation output (i.e. patent quantity and patent quality). Path analysis shows that value-added tax reform motivates corporate innovation by increasing the free cashflow af ter tax, and by decreasing the replacement cost of equipment used in innovation activities. We further show that such an effect is concentrated in firms where external financing dependence is higher, and the extent of fixed investments' increasing after the reform is larger. Our paper sheds new light on the real effect of value-added tax reform and has important implications for policymakers who aim to stimulate corporate innovation by using tax reform.