| Since the economic reform and open up in 1978,China has become the second largest economy in the world after nearly four decades of development,driven by low-cost labor,investment and trade surplus which depend on a large scale of rural labor force,abundant natural resources and the trend of economic globalization.Those led a solid economic foundation for China’s future development and improved people’s living standards in this stage,but also led to a series of economic and social problems such as unbalanced regional development,the gap between the rich and the poor,environmental pollution and corruption.After entering the new era,with the disappearance of demographic dividend,decline of investment returns and excessive consumption of natural resources,in order to avoid falling into the "middle-income trap",in 2011,the Chinese government officially proposed to change the mode of economic development from pursuing the speed of economic growth to paying more attention to the quality of economic development.Therefore,how to improve the total factor productivity to provide sustainable power for high-quality economic development has become the focus of the government and academia.Total factor productivity is the main index to measure the level of economic development of a country,moreover both technological level and resource allocation efficiency are the two core factors to determine the level of total factor productivity.As the world’s second largest economy and the largest developing country,China’s total factor productivity still lags behind that of the United States and other developed countries.The fundamental reason lies in its low technological level and capital allocation efficiency.In 2021,the World Intellectual Property Organization(WIPO)released the "Global Innovation Index 2021 report",which showed that China ranked 12th among more than 130 economies in the world and ranked first among middle-income economies.From the current situation,China has entered the ranks of innovative countries,but there is still a long way to fight for the forefront of innovative countries.At the same time,China’s low efficiency of resource allocation is also very prominent,causing a great loss to the total factor productivity level.By raising the resource allocation efficiency of China’s manufacturing industry to the same level as that of the United States,it would give China a 30 to 50 percent increase in total factor productivity,and even a half improvement would guarantee annual economic growth of 3.85 percent over the next decade.It is obviously great importance and urgency to improve both technological level and resource allocation efficiency for China’s high-quality economic development.Tax revenue is one of the main ways to solve the problem of market failure and obtain financial revenue,even more it is also an important bridge that link government,economy and society.Therefore,setting different tax policies can affect total factor productivity through different paths.In the stage of rapid economic growth in China,the tax-sharing system has mobilized the growth power of local economy through positive incentive effect,which has become one of the reasons for creating the miracle of economic growth.Furthermore,in the stage of high-quality economic development,tax should become an important policy tool to improve total factor productivity.Tax credits conform with market demand may positive stimulating firm R&D investment to improve technology level,in addition fair and effective tax levy and management environment can improve efficiency of resource allocation and provide guarantee for market environment through reduce firm’s tax evasion which allow the resources flow to the high production efficiency of firms,rather than flow to the low rate of firm.To sum up,China’s total factor productivity level is still not high.At the same time,we still have two problems:containment of the core technology,and obstacles in the market allocation of production factors.By formulating,improving and using tax policies more reasonably and effectively,the government can encourage firms to carry out innovative research and development to improve the technical merit and overall economic level,meanwhile enhance the fairness of firm tax environment,may improve the efficiency of resources allocation among firms,and thus positively affect the total factor productivity of the country.Therefore,this paper chooses tax policy as the entry point to study the impact of tax policy on the two main paths to determine the level of total factor productivity.Firstly,from the perspective of mainstream accounting framework,the impact path of total factor productivity is decomposed into technical level and resource allocation efficiency.Secondly,by theoretical model we demonstrate the influence and mechanism of tax credit on technology level and tax enforcement on resource allocation efficiency.Finally,we successively choose the tax credit for accelerated depreciation of fixed assets representing the tax incentive policy,and choose the Golden Tax Policy III representing the tax collection and administration policy.Both of these are selected as the quasi-natural experimental framework to empirically verify the conclusion of theoretical demonstration.In short,the research of this paper is based on the classical theoretical model to add China’s actual situation,make the model more suitable for the study of China’s economic problems,then use micro data and specific policies to verify the authenticity of the theoretical argument.Through sorting out and summarizing existing literature,it is found that most of them only discuss the impact of tax policy on technological level or resource allocation efficiency from a single perspective,or directly discuss the impact of tax policy on total factor productivity.However,few literatures consider the effect and mechanism of tax policy on technology level and resource allocation efficiency together.This paper systematically explains the internal relationship between tax policy and the two paths affecting total factor productivity from both theoretical and empirical aspects,which has certain theoretical and practical significance on how to formulate and improve tax policy to promote high-quality economic development.This paper is divided into six chapters,the main contents and conclusions of each chapter are as follows:Chapter one is the introduction.At the beginning,it illuminates the realistic basis and research significance for the topic selection of this article,next it defines the scope of key concepts,summarizes the main research content,sorts out the structure arrangement,introduces the research methods,and summarizes the innovation points and shortcomings of the research in this paper.Chapter two is the literature review.This chapter first sorts out the relevant literature on the influencing path of total factor productivity and explains that technological level and resource allocation efficiency have different degrees of influence on total factor productivity.Secondly,it sorts out the domestic and foreign research results on the influence of tax policies on the technological progress of firms,and the domestic and foreign literature on the tax incentive policy for accelerated depreciation of fixed assets related about the empirical analysis of this part.Thirdly,it concludes the domestic and foreign research results on the impact of tax policies on the efficiency of resource allocation,as well as the domestic and foreign literatures on the Golden Tax Policy Ⅲ of tax collection and management policies related to the empirical analysis of this part.Finally,it reviews the research results of existing literature.Chapter three is the theoretical analysis part.Firstly,this chapter strictly proves that two factors affecting total factor productivity are technical level and resource allocation efficiency from the perspective of productivity decomposition.Then we structure a theoretical model to analyze the impact of tax policies on technology level and resource allocation efficiency.Secondly,it structures the influence of tax incentive policy on R&D investment of firms.Consider China’s private firms face serious financing constraints,this article put the financing constraint of firms into Chen’s model,built a two stage partial equilibrium model,and use the model to analyse the tax incentive policy to the firm R&D costs and benefits in the case of the firms face financing constraints,by comparing the firm R&D costs and benefits before and after tax changes,It is proved that the tax incentive policy alleviates the financing constraints of firms,which is equivalent to reducing the R&D cost of firms,and at the same time improving the benefits of R&D investment.Thirdly,this part discusses the influence of tax policies on resource allocation efficiency based on the theoretical framework of Hsieh and Klenow(2009).Specifically,this article brings the dispersion of effective tax among firms into the theoretical framework of Hsieh and Klenow(2009).Due to the dispersion of effective tax among firms leads to misallocation of resources,so more reasonable tax collection and administration policy can enhance the tax enforcement and then improve the efficiency of resource allocation,by reducing firm tax evasion,then lower the dispersion of effective tax among firms.Chapter four is the empirical analysis part.This chapter examines the impact of tax policies on firm R&D investment.Because the firm R&D investment behavior has serious market failure,thus need government intervention,and tax incentive policy are an important tool for government to encourage firms to invest in R&D.Accordingly the tax incentive policy for accelerated depreciation of fixed assets can promote R&D investment of firms through alleviate financing constraints faced by firms by increasing cash flow by means of reducing the initial taxable income of firms when they purchase fixed assets.This chapter expands the model on the basis of Chapter 3,and demonstrates the influence mechanism of accelerated depreciation policy of fixed assets on R&D investment of firms from the theoretical level.Moreover,this part based on the data of A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2017,and regard the reform of accelerated depreciation policy of fixed assets in 2014 as a quasi-natural experiment and research by using Difference-in-Difference method.This paper examines the impact of the implementation of tax incentives policy on firm R&D investment.The research proves that the tax incentive policy for accelerated depreciation of fixed assets can significantly improve the level of firm R&D investment by alleviating financing constraints,and the tax incentive policy also has a significant impact on the extensive marginal of firm R&D investment.Therefore,the formulation of targeted tax incentives can simultaneously promote enterprises to carry out and increase R&D investment,thus improving the technological level and exerting a positive incentive effect on total factor productivity.Chapter five is the empirical analysis part.This chapter examines the impact of tax collection and management policy on resource allocation efficiency.Improving tax enforcement can great significance reduce the dispersion of effective tax rates among firms,then improve the efficiency of resource allocation and promoting high-quality development of China’s economy.This chapter takes the implementation of the Golden Tax Policy Ⅲ as the subject natural experiment and uses the Multistage Difference-inDifference method to study the influence of improving tax enforcement on the efficiency of resource allocation and its mechanism.Through empirical test,it is concluded that the implementation of the Golden Tax Policy Ⅲ significantly improves the efficiency of resource allocation,and its mechanism is that the improvement of tax collection and management ability increases the efficiency of resource allocation by inhibiting firm tax evasion and reducing the difference of effective VAT rates among firms.Due to the different motivations and capabilities of tax evasion of firms of different sizes,the implementation of Golden Tax Policy Ⅲ reducing the dispersion of effective VAT rate among firms by mainly increasing the effective VAT rate of small firms,while the effective VAT rate of other scales firms remains unchanged.Moreover,the improvement of tax enforcement has a more obvious effect on the improvement of resource allocation efficiency among firms both in labor-intensive industries and industries which have greater tax evasion motivation.Therefore,the government’s use of reasonable and effective tax collection and administration policies can improve the national tax enforcement,thus improving the efficiency of resource allocation,influencing the total factor productivity and promoting high-quality economic development.Chapter six is the research conclusion and policy suggestion.This chapter summarizes the theoretical and empirical conclusions of the analysis of the impact path of tax policies on total factor productivity,and puts forward relevant policy suggestions according to the research conclusions. |
