Author(s)

Anqi Wang ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing, China

Corresponding Author

Anqi Wang

ABSTRACT

Market failures hinder green technology innovation. This study investigates whether government tax policies incentivize enterprises to pursue green innovation. Leveraging a quasi-natural experiment based on the accelerated depreciation policy for fixed assets and using data from A-share listed firms (2011–2021), we employ a difference-in-differences approach to assess the policy's impact. The findings reveal that: (1) accelerated depreciation significantly enhances corporate green innovation; (2) the effect is more pronounced for state-owned enterprises than for private firms; (3) environmental regulation amplifies the positive impact of accelerated depreciation on green innovation; (4) the policy promotes green innovation through three mechanisms: alleviating financial constraints, increasing environmental investment, and mitigating managerial agency problems. Robustness checks, including parallel trend analysis, placebo tests, and alternative explanatory variables, confirm these results.

KEYWORDS

Tax incentives; accelerated depreciation policy for fixed assets; green technology innovation; environmental regulation

CITE THIS PAPER

Anqi Wang, Tax Incentives, Environmental Regulation and Corporate Green Technology Innovation: Evidence Based on a Quasi-natural Experiment. Population, Resources & Environmental Economics (2025) Vol. 6: 61-77. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/pree.2025.060109.

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