OECD Economics Department Working Papers

ISSN :
1815-1973 (online)
DOI :
10.1787/18151973
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Working papers from the Economics Department of the OECD that cover the full range of the Department’s work including the economic situation, policy analysis and projections; fiscal policy, public expenditure and taxation; and structural issues including ageing, growth and productivity, migration, environment, human capital, housing, trade and investment, labour markets, regulatory reform, competition, health, and other issues.
 

Do Corporate Taxes Reduce Productivity and Investment at the Firm Level?

Cross-Country Evidence from the Amadeus Dataset You or your institution have access to this content

Authors:
Cyrille Schwellnus1, Jens Arnold1
Author Affiliations
  • 1: OECD, France

Publication Date
30 Sep 2008
Bibliographic information
No.:
641
Pages
27
DOI
10.1787/236246774048

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This paper uses a stratified sample of firms across OECD economies over the period 1996-2004 to analyse the effects of corporate taxes on productivity and investment. Applying a differences-in-differences estimation strategy which exploits differential effects of corporate taxes on firms with different profitability, it is found that corporate taxes have a negative effect on productivity at the firm level. The effect is negative across firms of different size and age classes except for the small and young, which may be attributable to the relatively low profitability of small and young firms. The negative effect of corporate taxes is particularly pronounced for firms that are catching up with the technological frontier. In the investment analysis, the results suggest that corporate taxes reduce investment through an increase in the user cost of capital. This may partly explain the negative productivity effects of corporate taxes if new capital goods embody technological change.
Keywords:
growth, fiscal policy, productivity
JEL Classification:
  • D21: Microeconomics / Production and Organizations / Firm Behavior: Theory
  • D24: Microeconomics / Production and Organizations / Production; Cost; Capital; Capital, Total Factor, and Multifactor Productivity; Capacity
  • E22: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Macroeconomics: Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment / Capital; Investment; Capacity
  • E62: Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics / Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook / Fiscal Policy
  • H25: Public Economics / Taxation, Subsidies, and Revenue / Business Taxes and Subsidies
  • H32: Public Economics / Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents / Firm