Do regional tax incentive policies improve productivity?

The difficulty in transforming old industrial areas constitutes a significant factor contributing to regional development imbalances. Can regional tax incentives, as a crucial component of regional policies, polish the "rust belt" regions? This study leverages the inaugural Value-Added Tax (VAT) reform in China as an opportunity to explore the potential of regional tax incentives in achieving sustainable development in traditional industrial areas. Drawing upon a comprehensive industrial enterprise database, we employ a Propensity Score Matching-Difference in Differences (PSM-DID) approach to examine the efficacy of these tax incentives. Our findings reveal that: (1) Regional tax incentives primarily enhance firms productivity by stimulating investment in enterprises, yet they do not contribute to improved investment efficiency or spur innovation within firms. (2) Regional tax incentives have alleviated financing constraints for enterprises in old industrial bases, significantly enhancing the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) of firms with higher financing constraints. This policy has had an even stronger impact on improving the TFP of state-owned and monopolistic enterprises. (3) Regional tax incentives have impeded productivity growth by preventing the exit of low-efficiency firms and the entry of high-efficiency ones. These incentives also increased the likelihood of "zombie firms" forming and failed to promote endogenous economic growth in the Northeast region. Additionally, they have distorted the allocation of resources towards capital and technology-intensive industries in that area. In China's old industrial bases, regional tax incentives should be coordinated with market-oriented reforms; these regional tax incentive policies should also be further enriched.