近日，复旦大学中国社会主义市场经济研究中心陈钊、刘志阔两位老师与杜克大学Xian Jiang、Juan Carlos Suárez Serrato、Daniel Yi Xu共同完成的论文“Tax Policy and Lumpy Investment Behavior: Evidence from China’s VAT Reform”被经济学顶尖期刊Review of Economic Studies正式接受并在线发表。
这项研究发现，中国2009年的增值税转型改革有明显的投资拉动作用，且该效应主要源于重新激活“躺平（inaction）”企业的投资行为。
陈钊 教授
复旦大学中国社会主义市场经济研究中心
刘志阔 副教授、
复旦大学中国社会主义市场经济研究中心
We incorporate the lumpy nature of firm-level investment into the study of how tax policy affects investment behavior. We show that tax policies can directly impact the lumpiness of investment. Extensive-margin responses to tax policy are key to understanding the effects of different tax reforms and to designing effective stimulus policies. We illustrate these results by studying China's 2009 VAT reform, which lowered the tax cost of investment and reduced partial irreversibility|the price gap between new and used capital. Using administrative tax data and a difference-in-differences design, we estimate a 36% investment increase. This effect is driven by investment spikes, which is consistent with the reduction of VAT-induced partial irreversibility. Using a dynamic investment model that fits the reduced-form effects of the reform, we show that policies that directly reduce the likelihood of firm inaction are more effective at stimulating investment.
