The Impact of Tax Incentives on Innovation EfficiencyIn Agricultural Enterprises: A Study of A-Share Listed Companies

This study examines the impact of tax incentives on innovation efficiency using a longitudinal dataset ‎of A-share listed agricultural enterprises from 2015 to 2023. Employing a fixed-effects model, the ‎empirical results indicate a significant positive correlation between tax incentives and innovation ‎output. Specifically, a 1% increase in tax incentives correlates with a 0.15% increase in patent ‎applications. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that this effect is [stronger] in non-state-owned ‎enterprises and larger firms, suggesting that private entities are more responsive to fiscal levers. ‎Although government funding and direct subsidies are often debated in policy circles, the data ‎suggest that tax incentive mechanisms tend to have a stronger correlation with the promotion of ‎research and development activities, particularly in terms of moving innovations from the research ‎phase to practical market applications. Overall, while the econometric tests using fixed-effects ‎regression models indicate statistically significant relationships (with p-values consistently less than ‎‎0.05 for the key tax incentive coefficient), the outcomes are sensitive to firm-specific factors that ‎might simultaneously influence leverage and innovation capacity‎.