题　目：Tall Trees Catch Much Wind? The Effects of Formalization on Fiscal Capacity

嘉　宾：刘  宇  副教授  复旦大学

主持人：幸  婧  副教授  上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时　间：2023年5月18日（周四）10:00-11:30

地　点：上海交通大学（徐汇校区）安泰A507 

内容简介:

This paper examines the effects of formalizing firms on fiscal capacity. We exploit the exogenous discovery of new above-scale Chinese industrial firms, which are the most formally administered firms in China, during the 2004 Economic Census. We measure local formalization shock as the extent of abnormal increases in above-scale industrial firm numbers in a county due to the census, and we compare counties that experienced different extents of the shock in a difference-in-differences strategy. We find that the formalization shock significantly increased counties’ tax revenue and firms’ remitted taxes, driven by previously below-scale firms paying more taxes and existing above-scale firms remitting more taxes. Our results imply that formalizing firms would strengthen the self-enforcing mechanism of VAT. A back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that 26% of the VAT in China was still evaded due to informality in the year of 2004.

演讲人简介：

刘宇，复旦大学经济学院公共经济系副教授。目前主要研究方向为发展经济学和公共经济学， 文章发表在Journal of International Economics, Journal of Comparative Economics, Journal of Economic Behavioral and Organization等期刊，并为多个主流国际期刊审稿。

欢迎广大师生参加!