| Human capital is an important source of economic growth,and human capital accumulation is an indispensable and important link for high-quality development.In the framework of endogenous growth theory,human capital is characterized as having the characteristics of increasing returns to scale.It is an important factor that promotes the development and use of new technologies,and therefore is the key to economic growth.A large number of empirical studies have also confirmed the positive significance of human capital accumulation for the improvement of macro and micro production efficiency from different dimensions.However,there is still a big gap in the level of human capital between China and developed countries.The lack of human capital accumulation is not conducive to solving the contradiction between the people’s growing need for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development.How to effectively promote the accumulation of human capital within a country,especially at the enterprise level,is an important issue that academia and government departments are very concerned about.There are two main channels for human capital accumulation: formal education and non-formal education.The former refers to education in the form of academic qualifications provided by schools,while the latter is mainly manifested in on-the-job training provided by various social organizations and enterprises.Education in the form of academic qualifications builds the foundation and stock of human capital in the entire society.On-thejob training supplements specific knowledge and skills,and plays a key role in supporting the incremental part of human capital.A large number of studies have confirmed that providing on-the-job training for employees is an important way for companies to accumulate high-quality human capital,and is of significance for improving the skill level of employees and the level of corporate innovation.In some countries in transition,socialized training has even exceeded formal higher education in improving corporate innovation performance.Different from formal education,on-the-job training involves the company’s measurement of training cost sharing and its own benefits.How to implement reasonable external incentives for it has always been the focus of policy.In addition to direct financial subsidies,a common idea to motivate companies to provide on-the-job training is to provide tax credits for related training expenditures,thereby reducing the training costs of companies.However,in the literature,empirical research on the impact of tax incentive policies on enterprise on-the-job training is relatively lacking and the conclusions are not stable.Based on a quasi-natural experiment in China,this article attempts to examine the impact of tax incentive policies on enterprise on-the-job training under a credible framework.For a long time,the development of on-the-job training for enterprises has been placed at an important position in the development of the vocational education system by the Chinese government,and has been supported by many policies including tax credits.As early as 1981,the Chinese government stipulated that the education expenditures of the employees of enterprises could be deducted before income tax at a rate of 1.5% of the total wages and salaries.The above-mentioned ratio was increased to 2.5% in 2002.In 2018,this ratio was increased to 8% again.It should be pointed out that before this round of adjustments,the 8%pre-tax deduction ratio was implemented in high-tech enterprises in 2015.This lays a good foundation for the use of the difference method to examine the effects of tax incentive policies.Based on the data of listed companies from 2015 to 2019,this article studies the impact of the increase in the tax credit ratio on the on-the-job training of enterprises.The research based on the difference method found that compared with the control group,the increase in the tax credit ratio significantly improved the supply level of on-the-job training for the treatment group.The results are still valid after the parallel trend test,placebo test and other robustness tests.Moreover,small businesses and low-wage companies are more susceptible to policy shocks.Further research found that tax incentives can not only promote the provision of on-the-job training for enterprises,but also improve the production capacity of employees,and ultimately improve the business performance and innovation output of enterprises.This article supplements existing research from the following two aspects: Firstly,this article enriches the research evaluating the effectiveness of on-the-job training intervention policies,and provides effective evidence for understanding the implementation of tax incentive policies in developing countries;secondly,this article also echoes research related to human capital accumulation. |
