税制绿色化的微观政策效应——基于企业环保新闻文本情绪数据的检验

Micro-Policy Effects of Green Tax:Evidence Based on Data of Environmental News Text Sentiment of Enterprises

2018年1月1日正式实施的《环境保护税法》是税制绿色化转型的核心标志,其政策效应值得关注。本文使用文本分析法计算企业环保新闻文本情绪,基于双重差分法研究《环境保护税法》实施的微观政策效应与传导路径。研究发现,《环境保护税法》的实施显著改善了重污染企业的环境绩效,环保新闻文本情绪提升明显,且上述结论在经过一系列稳健性检验后依然成立;在政策传导路径上,《环境保护税法》的实施有利于企业从“观念治理”“末端治理”“源头治理”三个方向系统改善其环境绩效,但在政府环保关注度较低、管理层决策视域短视程度较高以及绿色转型基础较差的企业组内,《环境保护税法》实施对企业环境绩效的改善效应显著弱化。经济后果检验发现,企业依据《环境保护税法》积极改善其环境绩效,不仅能够充分缓解企业风险,还能够提升企业价值和全要素生产率,实现高质量发展。本文的研究回应了宏观税制绿色化能否真正助推微观企业绿色发展这一基本问题,为进一步优化相关政策法规提供了参考。

China has entered a new stage of development,which highlights the importance of fully implementing the new development concept that“lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets”.To actively and methodically propel China’s transition towards environmentally sustainable growth,we must not only focus on partial equilibrium,but also unravel the underlying economic mechanisms and adopt comprehensive strategies.Within China’s economic governance framework,taxation stands as the cornerstone.The official enactment of the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China on January 1,2018 signifies a pivotal moment in the greening of the tax governance system,necessitating due analysis of its consequential micro-policy effects.This study analyzes environmental news texts using text analysis to measure sentiment and employs the difference-in-differences(DID)method to examine the micro-policy effects and transmission pathways of the Environmental Protection Tax Law.The results indicate that the law significantly improves the environmental performance of heavily-polluting enterprises,as reflected in the positive change in sentiment of environmental news texts.The policy’s impact is evident across three dimensions of conceptual,end-of-pipe,and source treatment.However,in business groups with low government’s environmental attention,shorter-sighted management decision-making,and a weaker foundation for green transformation,the law’s positive impact on environmental performance is diminished significantly.The economic consequence analysis demonstrates that enterprises complying with the policy intention of the Environmental Protection Tax Law and actively improving environmental performance can not only fully alleviate enterprise risks,but also enhance enterprise value and total factor productivity(TFP),achieving high-quality development.This paper contributes to existing literature in three aspects.Firstly,it examines the direct economic consequences of the Environmental Protection Tax Law,addressing a fundamental question of whether the macro-level greening of the tax system truly facilitates the green development of microlevel enterprises.Compared with existing literature,this paper focuses on enterprise environmental performance as the outcome variable.This approach allows for a systematic analysis of the impact of the Environmental Protection Tax Law within a unified framework and fills the research gap in evaluating performance,which previous studies have not adequately addressed.Secondly,the sentiment indicator derived from environmental news texts enriches the variable selection in existing literature on firm environmental performance.Without pollutant emission indicators at the level of listed companies,environmental information embedded in external environmental news texts can be extracted using text analysis methods.Compared with traditional indicators,the indicator offers greater objectivity and a higher degree of decentralization,making it a valuable supplement to existing indicators of environmental performance.Thirdly,this study not only enriches the understanding of mechanisms through which the Environmental Protection Tax Law improves firm environmental performance from perspectives of internal environmental governance and external media governance,but also explores its heterogeneous characteristics.Empirical results show that the full realization of the policy effects of the Environmental Protection Tax Law also requires systematic support from other policy instruments,such as green finance,to mitigate the heterogeneity disruptions in the policy implementation.