Politicians' Ideology, State Intervention, and Corporate Taxation

• 成果类型: Article; Early Access
• 署名作者: Na, Ke; Shevlin, Terry; Wang, Danqing; Yan, Wenjia
• 署名单位: University of California System; University of California Irvine; Hong Kong University of Science & Technology; Nanjing University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.03268
• 发表日期: 2025
• 关键词: politicians' ideology; State intervention; corporate taxation

摘要

This paper examines whether and how politicians' ideologies influence corporate taxation. Our tests exploit the implementation of the 1978 Reform and Opening-up policy in China that significantly weakens the communist ideology. Using textual analyses of city secretaries' speeches, we first establish that secretaries who joined the communist party after 1978 have a weaker communist ideology. We next show that, in the postreform period, firms in cities whose secretaries joined the communist party after 1978 have significantly lower effective tax rates than those of firms with secretaries joining the communist party beforehand. Further analyses reveal that tax benefit provisions and tax enforcement are the mechanisms through which secretaries' ideologies influence corporate taxation.