讲座主题：How Tax Reform from Switching GRT to VAT Affect Firms’ Outsourcing Behavior and Production Efficiency: Evidence from China

　　主讲人：李艳，清华大学经济学博士

　　讲座地点：C155

　　讲座时间：2018年3月29日上午10点30分

　　主办单位：武汉大学经济与管理学院经济系

　　讲座摘要：Theory suggests that gross receipt tax (GRT) incentivizes firms to vertically integrate and thus distorts production efficiency. Yet there has been surprisingly little empirical evidence for the effect of GRT on firms’ production boundary. In this paper, we examine how Chinese tax reform that switched from GRT to VAT affected firms’ outsourcing behavior and production efficiency. Using administrative data on firms tax payment from 2009 to 2015, we find that GRT-VAT reform increases outsourcing probability by up to 11.08 percent for every 1 percent increase in exposure for manufacturing firms and 5.8 percent for affected service firms comparing to unaffected service firms, and boosts the share of outsourcing out of sales amount by up to 0.26 percent for every 1 percent increase in exposure for manufacturing firms and 2.2 percent for affected service firms comparing to unaffected service firms respectively. Furthermore, we find that manufacturing firms with higher exposure to the reform show a greater increase in total factor productivity (TFP) comparing to lower exposure manufacturing firms. These results suggest that the reform of switching GRT to VAT encourages specialization and improves production efficiency.

　　个人简介：清华大学经济管理学院博士，研究方向为公共经济学与国际贸易。论文已发表在《经济研究》和《管理世界》等国内期刊上，并担任《经济研究》匿名审稿人。