资本市场开放与企业避税——基于“沪港通”和“深港通”交易制度的准自然实验

Stock Market Liberalization and Tax Avoidance:A Quasi-natural Experiment of Mainland-Hong Kong Stock Connect

利用“沪港通”和“深港通”交易制度实施提供的准自然实验情境,以2008—2019年沪深两市A股上市公司为研究样本,考察资本市场开放对企业避税行为的影响。研究发现,资本市场开放对企业避税行为具有显著的抑制作用,即“沪港通”和“深港通”交易制度实施后,试点公司避税程度显著下降,该结果在经过一系列稳健性检验后仍然成立。作用机制分析结果表明,资本市场开放主要通过缓解融资约束、强化对管理层的监督以及提升信息透明度等途径抑制企业避税行为。异质性检验结果显示,资本市场开放对企业避税行为的抑制效应主要存在于代理问题和融资约束较为严重的企业中,即在机构投资者持股比例低和企业融资需求大的样本中,资本市场开放对企业避税行为的负向影响更强。

Taking advantage of the quasi-natural experimental provided by Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect programs,based on the sample of China’s A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2019,this paper examines the influence of stock market liberalization on tax avoidance.The results show that the stock market liberalization has a significant inhibition effect on corporate tax avoidance,that is,after the implementation of Shanghai-Hong Kong Stock Connect and Shenzhen-Hong Kong Stock Connect,the degree of tax avoidance of pilot companies decreased significantly,and this result is still the same after a series of robust tests.The results of mechanism analysis show that stock market liberalization mainly affect enterprise tax avoidance through mitigating financial constraints,strengthening supervision of management and improving information transparency.The heterogeneity test results show that the restraining effect of stock market liberalization on tax avoidance mainly lies in enterprises with serious agency problem and financial constraints,that is,in the samples with low proportion of institutional investors holding shares and large financing demand,the negative impact of capital market opening on corporate tax avoidance is stronger.