VAT Credit Refunds and Firms’ Export Development Evidence from Chinese A-Share Listed Companies
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Keywords
vat credit refunds, export development, financing constraints, total factor productivity, difference-in-differences
Abstract
This study examines whether China’s value-added tax (VAT) credit refund policy supports firms’ export development through financing relief and productivity improvements. Using an unbalanced panel of 6014 firm-year observations covering 821 A-share listed firms during 2013–2023, we estimate difference-in-differences models with firm and year fixed effects. The fully controlled policy coefficient on log overseas operating revenue is 0.2202 and is significant at the 1% level. Event-study estimates do not reject parallel pre-policy trends, while placebo, propensity score matching, weighting, and sample-period checks support the positive association. Additional estimates show an improvement in firm resilience. Mechanism regressions yield positive indirect effects through reduced financing constraints and higher total factor productivity, with firm-clustered bootstrap confidence intervals excluding zero. The point estimate is larger for non-state-owned firms, although the difference between ownership groups is not formally tested. The findings are consistent with liquidity and productivity channels supporting overseas business activity. Because overseas revenue is a scale-based proxy, the results do not directly establish improvements in export product quality or domestic value added.
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