Stay or Go? Intra-government Tax Competition and Firms’ Location Decisions in China

The impact of the intra-government (vertical) tax competition on firms’ location choices is seldom studied in the literature. In this paper, we use the local corporate income tax revenue retention rate to represent the outcome of the vertical tax strategic interactions between the central and local governments in China. Theoretically and empirically, we find that a higher local corporate income tax revenue retention rate attracts newly-established firms, even when we simultaneously take into account the effect of the horizontal tax competition, i.e., the local effective corporate income tax rates. Such positive effect of the local corporate income tax revenue retention rate on firms’ location decisions is robust to a battery of sub-sample analyses and alternative model specifications, and is heterogeneous across firms with different ownership structures. This effect is more prominent in provinces with weaker agglomeration forces as well.