Environmental Taxes,financing Constraints And Enterprise Innovation

Since the reform and opening up,China’s economy has entered a stage of rapid development.However,economic development has brought about the negative impact of environmental pollution,which in turn restricts economic development.At present,it is urgent to solve the problem of environmental pollution.On January 1,2018,China formally implemented the Environmental Protection Tax Law of the People’s Republic of China,bringing environmental protection into legal procedures.As pollutant producers and environmental tax targets,enterprises naturally become the main body of energy conservation and emission reduction.Under the background of environmental protection,people pay more and more attention to environmental protection,and environmental tax and enterprise innovation increasingly become the focus of academic research.Facing the environmental tax,enterprises hold two attitudes.Some enterprises actively respond,carry out innovation and upgrading,reduce pollutant emissions,and then reduce the amount of environmental tax paid,and shoulder the responsibility of protecting the environment.Another part of enterprises respond negatively,believing that the amount of environmental tax paid is lower than the cost of innovation,and they are unwilling to make innovation.Then,does environmental tax have a positive effect on enterprise innovation? It is the key content of this paper.Since enterprise innovation is long-term and unstable,it needs a large amount of funds to support it continuously,and it is difficult to realize it only by the internal funds of the enterprise.Therefore,the external financing constraint of the enterprise affects the innovation activities of the enterprise.This paper introduces the financing constraint to reflect the financing situation of the enterprise.Does financing constraint play an intermediary role between environmental tax and firm innovation,that is,can environmental tax promote firm innovation by reducing firm financing constraint? It is another key content of this paper.Based on the above research contents,this article first to the sorting of related literature,combing the environment tax,financing constraints and enterprise innovation of relevant literature,to potter hypothesis theory,the "double dividend" theory,signaling theory as the theoretical basis,this paper discusses the environment tax’s influence on the enterprise innovation,and the financing constraints into the research framework,and analyses the mechanism of action between the three,namely environmental taxes will reduce enterprise financing constraints,in turn,promote enterprise innovation,established to examine whether these two conclusions,this paper put forward two main research hypothesis.All A-share listed companies from 2013 to 2019 are selected as the research object,involving 8547 balanced panel observation values,and the corresponding regression model is established for empirical research.The results show that: environmental tax can significantly promote enterprise innovation;In the promotion of environmental tax on enterprise innovation,financing constraint plays a partial intermediary role.In this paper,three methods are used to conduct robustness test.Firstly,the definition of variables is changed,and the R & D investment is divided by the operating income,and then the regression is carried out again.Secondly,the measurement index of enterprise innovation should be changed,and the value of patent application should be delayed by one period to make a regression instead of R&D investment.Finally,the measure of financing constraint should be replaced by WW index instead of SA index.Both hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 passed the robustness test.This paper further studies the impact of environmental tax on enterprise innovation and the mediating role of financing constraint in the relationship between the two are affected by property right nature,regional economic development level and industrial pollution degree.In order to better promote enterprise innovation,energy conservation and emission reduction,this paper puts forward countermeasures and suggestions from the enterprises themselves and the government.In theory,the research results of this paper enrich the literature on environmental tax and enterprise innovation,and in practice,provide empirical methods for the improvement of environmental tax policy and the driving of enterprise innovation.