Tax Incentives,Cost Stickiness,and Production Efficiency

Since the 2008 economic crisis,China ’ s economy has entered a " new normal ".With the upgrading of the consumption structure,China ’s industrial structure adjustment and market demand is increasingly rich,but the cost of production factors,lack of efficient production capacity,inefficient overcapacity,low enthusiasm for innovation and many other issues become an important obstacle to the development of China ’ s manufacturing industry.In order to reduce the financial pressure of enterprises,encourage enterprises to update equipment,improve the enthusiasm of innovation,and promote the high-quality development of manufacturing industry,the Chinese government successively promulgated relevant documents on accelerated depreciation policy in 2014,2015 and 2019.The scope of implementation has been gradually extended from six pilot industries to all manufacturing industries,and the tax incentive policy has been continuously improved.Accelerated depreciation policy is the financial means adopted by the government,through the macroeconomic level to adjust the flow and allocation of resources to make up for market failure,for China to complete the " manufacturing power " goal plays a great role in promoting.The implementation of accelerated depreciation policy will enable enterprises to adjust resource decisions,and cost stickiness reflects the effect of enterprise resource allocation.Therefore,based on the behavior of enterprise resource allocation,this paper deeply studies the relationship between macro tax incentive policy and micro enterprise cost stickiness.Different from the previous " cost stickiness disadvantage theory ",this paper explains the positive effect of accelerated depreciation policy on the cost stickiness of enterprises from the perspective of the positive effect of cost stickiness,and proves that the cost stickiness caused by the tax incentive will improve the total factor productivity of enterprises through the test of economic consequences,which provides a useful reference for the government to implement tax incentive policy reasonably.Based on this,this paper takes the accelerated depreciation policy promulgated in2014 and 2015 as an external shock,and uses the difference-in-difference model to try to test the impact on the cost stickiness of listed manufacturing companies.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)The implementation of accelerated depreciation policy has significantly increased the cost stickiness of pilot enterprises.(2)The increase of cost stickiness caused by accelerated depreciation policy can also promote the improvement of total factor productivity of enterprises.(3)Enterprise resource allocation behavior plays a mechanism role in the relationship between the two,the tax incentive policy by guiding enterprises to increase investment in capital,manpower,research and development of these key resources,improve cost stickiness,laid the foundation for long-term development of enterprises in the future.(4)There is heterogeneity in the effect of accelerated depreciation policy,which is not only more obvious in micro-enterprises with high adjustment costs,optimistic expectations of management and small agency problems,but also more obvious in meso-industries and regions with high industrial concentration and low regional marketization.This paper may have the following contributions:(1)This paper enriches the research on the economic consequences of accelerated depreciation policy.At present,there is little literature on the impact of accelerated depreciation policy on corporate cost behavior,and cost management is the core issue of manufacturing enterprises.This paper explores the relationship between macro-level accelerated depreciation policy and micro-level enterprise cost stickiness,in order to supplement the relevant research on the policy effect and action scenario of accelerated depreciation policy.(2)This paper enriches the research on cost stickiness.Different from the " cost stickiness disadvantage theory " of most scholars in the past,this paper innovatively analyzes the relationship between accelerated depreciation policy and enterprise cost stickiness from the perspective of the positive effect of cost stickiness.On the basis of analyzing the relationship between accelerated depreciation policy and enterprise cost stickiness,by testing the economic consequences of cost stickiness,it is verified that the changed cost stickiness belongs to the upgrading of " high-efficiency capacity ",rather than the redundancy of " low-efficiency capacity ",which supports the " cost stickiness advantage theory ".(3)This paper has some policy implications for the implementation of accelerated depreciation policy.This paper links macro tax incentive policy with micro enterprise cost behavior,helps policy makers to deeply understand the implementation effect of accelerated depreciation policy,and provides theoretical basis and empirical reference for further promotion of accelerated depreciation policy.(4)This paper also has implications for manufacturing enterprise managers decision-making.In the process of policy implementation,enterprises should not simply regard the increase of cost stickiness as the deterioration of their operating conditions.It should be taken into account that cost stickiness represents resource reserves in the long-term development of enterprises and is the key to improving total factor productivity.The conclusion of this paper is that enterprise managers manage cost reasonably.