题　目：Environmental-Unfriendly Tax Avoidance

嘉　宾：ZHENG Xiang（郑翔），助理教授，新加坡南洋理工大学

主持人：李烁，助理教授，上海交通大学安泰经济与管理学院

时　间：2026年5月27日（周三）14:00-15:30

地　点：上海交通大学 徐汇校区安泰楼A407室

内容简介:

This paper examines how firms use carbon allowances to reduce corporate tax burdens by routing allowance transactions through internal trading hubs in low-tax jurisdictions and by exploiting fluctuations in carbon prices. Using a  dataset that captures the universe of carbon-allowance transactions in the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) from 2014 to 2020, we document that roughly 35\% of corporate groups operate internal hubs that collect and redistribute allowances across affiliated entities required to surrender them. Many of these hubs are located in jurisdictions with low statutory tax rates or in recognized tax havens, resulting in significantly lower effective tax rates for hubs relative to other entities within the same multinational group. With such internal reallocations of allowances, firms can generate substantial tax savings. We further document that such tax-motivated internal trading and profit shifting is associated with lower investment in decarbonization and higher volumes of allowance surrenders. Taken together, it appears that tax avoidance alleviates the financial pressure to reduce emissions.

演讲人简介：

Xiang Zheng is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He received his doctoral degree from the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management (Germany), a master's degree from Tilburg University (the Netherlands), and a bachelor's degree in Accounting from Sun Yat-sen University (China). Prior to joining NTU, he was an Assistant Professor at the NHH Norwegian School of Economics.

His research interests include corporate disclosure, regulation, and corporate sustainability, with a focus on how information flows within and across organizations. He is particularly interested in the use of emerging technologies, such as large language models, to analyze and interpret corporate communications. His work examines how these technologies can enhance stakeholders’ understanding of public disclosures and support decision-making under uncertainty. He also studies how regulation shapes these dynamics. His research has been published in the Journal of Accounting Research.

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