Export tax rebates and enterprise export resilience in China

Abstract

This paper discusses the micro effect of export stimulus policy. We use the seven rounds of export tax rebates implemented by the Chinese government during the international financial crisis as a natural experiment and explore their impact on the export resilience of firms using the difference-in-differences approach. We find that the export resilience of Chinese enterprises increased by 0.027 standard deviations due to export tax rebates. Further studies confirm that export tax rebates significantly improve export resilience mainly by reducing value-added taxes, expanding production scale, and accelerating the adjustment of export structure. In addition, the positive effect of export tax rebates varies among enterprises and products. These results highlight the critical role of stimulative policies in promoting export resilience.

KEYWORDS:

• Export tax rebates
• export resilience
• DID method

JEL Classifications:

• F42
• F13
• F14

Acknowledgments

We thank the editor Professor Zhao and an anonymous reviewer for their valuable comments, which improve the paper tremendously.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by The National Social Science Fund of China [grant number 20&ZD119].