Research on the Impact of Real Estate Tax Policy on Urban Economic Growth Based on Synthetic Control Method: A Case Study of Shanghai and Chongqing

The real estate tax is an effective means for the state to regulate the real estate market, and it is of great significance to study its policy effect for guiding the healthy development of the real estate market and high-quality economic growth. This paper focuses on the reform of real estate tax in Shanghai and Chongqing, selects balanced panel data of 35 medium-sized and large cities from 2006 to 2017 as research samples, adopts synthetic control analysis method to empirically analyze the impact of real estate tax pilot policy on urban economic growth, and carries out robustness test. It is found that the impact of real estate tax reform on economic growth is heterogeneous. The real estate tax reform in Shanghai significantly inhibits the urban economic growth, while the real estate tax reform in Chongqing has a strong policy strength, which promotes the urban economic growth. Therefore, this paper gives suggestions for future property tax reform, including expanding the scope of property tax collection, lifting household registration restrictions in the setting of duty-free area, and giving full support to real enterprise investment while implementing the property tax policy to promote urban economic growth.