Place -based preferential tax policy and industrial development: Evidence from India ? s program on industrially backward districts

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hasan, Rana; Jiang, Yi; Rafols, Radine Michelle
• 署名单位: Asian Development Bank; Syracuse University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2020.102621
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: Place-based policy; Spatial spillovers; Preferential tax; Backward districts; Regression discontinuity Informality

摘要

We evaluate a tax-exemption program initiated by the Indian government in 1994 to promote manufacturing in districts designated as industrially backward on the basis of a continuous gradation score that reflected district characteristics in early 1990s. Employing a regression discontinuity design, we find that the program led to a significant increase in firm entry and employment, especially in light manufacturing industries of the better-off backward districts in the short run. However, this was partly driven by spatial displacement of economic activ-ity from neighboring districts that narrowly missed qualifying for the program. Further, we do not find the effects of the program to persist after it ended.