The incomplete devolution of taxation powers to English Local Government has been constrained by central government's doubling of reductions in property taxes for small firms. The aim is to stimulate local growth, but we question the economic logic. We analyse reductions in place since 2005, with a newly linked dataset for all firms that incorporate administrative data down to local units. We find the reductions do not overcome supposed market failures, do not stimulate job growth and once we control for firm age, that the targeted small firms do not produce extra employment. Young firms and larger firms have better growth rates, but there is no systematic size effect. We conclude that the tax reductions fail because they do not account for tax capitalisation (i.e. incidence shifts from firms to property owners), the basic characteristics of the average small firm or develop a clear mechanism for change among heterogeneous economic actors.
We investigate the productivity spillovers from the UK government’s decision to use extensive property tax reductions as a key instrument to stimulate innovation in smaller businesses and drive local growth. To capture the complex interaction and clustering of hierarchical effects, we apply non-parametric Random Effects Expectation Maximisation algorithm that complements more standard econometric estimators, namely matching to control for endogeneity and control functions to estimate total factor productivity. These approaches enabled us to incorporate various contextual configurations in comparing the recipients of these reductions to non-recipients with regard to productivity, in which the UK has experienced a considerably worse performance than its peers since the great recession. Contrary to policy assumptions and business community expectations, we show that generic tax reductions, when significant, are mostly associated with lower productivity and thus have been unsuitably chosen as a policy mechanism to stimulate productivity growth. We further show how instruments that are not built for causality could be beneficial for policy evaluation.
Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were particularly hard hit by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, some performed relatively well, maintaining or increasing employment growth. We study these differences in performance through the lens of dynamic capabilities (DCs) theory, which we extend by incorporating the moderating effect of government support during COVID-19. We analyse responses from 1421 UK SMEs and find that government support and DCs positively impact employment. We also show that government support moderates the link between DCs and employment with a negative effect after the first COVID-19 lockdown. The findings highlight the role of government policy intervention in discouraging SMEs from effectively exercising DCs during a crisis and the general importance of DCs and government support in enabling SMEs to cope with shocks.
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