讲座主题：Firm Heterogeneity and Growth: An Empirical Perspective

主讲嘉宾：张红松 香港大学经管学院

讲座时间：2024年12月21日周六9:30

讲座地点：yd77699云顶国际沙河校区学院11号楼308

嘉宾简介：

张红松，香港大学经管学院经济学副教授，同时担任香港大学中国经济研究所副所长和香港大学经管学院深圳研究院经济战略中心副主任。研究领域包括实证产业组织、国际贸易和应用经济学，重点关注企业在生产力、供应商网络和需求方面的竞争力如何影响企业在国内和国际市场上的表现。研究成果发表在经济学的顶级期刊上，包括RAND Journal of Economics, Economic Journal, Review of Economics and Statistics, International Economic Review, Journal of Development Economics, and European Economic Review等。张红松教授自2020年以来担任International Journal of Industrial Organization（IJIO）的副主编，同时自2018年以来担任中国贸易研究集团的执行委员会成员。

讲座内容简介：The life cycle of firms features that young firms are smaller and have lower profitability than mature ones, yet the growth of young firms is imperative for the dynamic growth of industries. Using a pretax deduction policy reform in China that reduces the costs of selling expenses of qualified young firms, this paper investigates the effect of selling expenses and tax incentives on the growth of young manufacturing firms. The findings show that the reform incentivized qualified young firms to invest substantially more in selling expenses, which improved their output demand and profitability. The increased demand also induced greater investment in R&D due to complementarity. A counterfactual based on a structural model of firms' dynamic decisions on their selling expenses and R&D decisions demonstrates that the impact is quantitatively substantial. The pretax deduction policy increases the selling expenses ratio of qualified young firms by 1.75 percentage points (a 46 percent increase) on average. This results in an increase in their demand factor, productivity, and profitability by 22, 0.4, and 16 percent, respectively, in the long run. Overall, the paper finds that the age-based performance gap between young and mature firms is mainly driven by demand-side differences, rather than productivity as premised in the literature.