Does the environmental protection tax improve companies'green innovation efficiency?——Quasi natural experimental evidence from A-share listed companies
As a market-based economic incentive environmental regulation,environmental protection tax is essential to improve the efficiency of green innovation of enterprises,guide the green transformation and upgrading of enterprises,and promote the construction of ecological civilization.This paper uses the green innovation data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen in China from 2015 to 2020,takes the implementation of the Environmental Protection Tax Law as a natural experiment,constructs double and triple difference models to empirically test the influence effect and mechanism of environmental protection tax on the green innovation of enterprises.It is found that:First,implementing environmental protection tax has improved the enterprises'green innovation efficiency,which is still true after a series of robustness analysis.Second,mechanism analysis shows that environmental protection tax mainly improves enterprises'green innovation efficiency by increasing the cost of pollution discharge and enhancing the rigidity of law enforcement.The increase in pollution discharge costs will force enterprises to mitigate the negative impact that environmental taxes may have on corporate value creation by improving the efficiency of green innovation,while the rigidity of law enforcement can guide taxpayers to fulfill their environmental protection obligations by improving their green innovation efficiency.Third,the promotion effect of environmental protection tax on the green innovation efficiency of enterprises is heterogeneous,that is,the incentive effect of environmental protection tax on the green innovation efficiency of non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises in the eastern region is more obvious,while the impact on state-owned enterprises and enterprises in the central and western regions is not significant.Therefore,the government should comprehensively consider the economic situation and environmental carrying capacity of each region,improve the design of environmental tax rates,and appropriately increase the tax rate level of provinces with shifting tax burdens;continuously strengthen the law enforcement capabilities of relevant departments,further enhance the rigidity of law enforcement,consolidate the responsibility of enterprises for pollution control and emission reduction;furthermore optimizes the external environment in the central and western regions in terms of marketization and legal environment,incorporates the annual environmental protection contribution of enterprises into the performance evaluation framework of managers of state-owned enterprises,gives state-owned enterprises green innovation impetus,and ensures that environmental protection taxes can effectively improve the efficiency of green innovation of enterprises.
environmental protection taxgreen innovation efficiencysewage costrigidity of enforcement
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