This ESRI link suggests that shapefiles, unlike geodatabases do not have an XY Tolerance.
Under geometry limitations:
Shapefiles do not contain an XY tolerance like geodatabase feature classes. The XY tolerance is the minimum distance between coordinates before they are considered equal. This XY tolerance is used when evaluating relationships between features within the same feature class or between several different feature classes. It is also used extensively when editing features. If you are performing any sort of operation involving comparison between features, such as use of Overlay tools, the Clip tool, the Select Layer By Location tool, or nearly every tool that takes two or more feature classes as input, you should be using geodatabase feature classes (which have an XY tolerance) rather than shapefiles.