中国高创新投入与低生产率之谜:资源错配视角的解释

The Puzzle of R&D Boom and Productivity Slowdown in China: The Role of Resource Misallocation

本文针对中国创新投入快速增长而全要素生产率增速下降的现象,在异质性企业垄断竞争分析框架下引入要素市场扭曲与企业创新决策,刻画转型期中国全要素生产率决定的微观机理,发现要素市场扭曲通过影响企业创新、生产、进入与退出市场的决策,抵消了企业创新的要素重置效应,从而降低了加总全要素生产率。经验分析发现,企业创新使得生产要素从非创新企业流向创新企业;而要素市场扭曲导致企业间的要素错配,扭曲企业创新与退出市场的决策,要素错配效应大于企业创新的要素重置效应。中国制造业生产率的增长主要由企业生产率提高推动,企业间要素重置的贡献较小,创新企业与非创新企业之间的要素重置并没有带来行业加总生产率的提高。

To understand China’s recent R&D boom and productivity slowdown,this paper incorporates factor market distortions and firms’innovation decision-making into a theoretical model of monopolistic competition with firm heterogeneity.The model characterizes the micro-mechanism of productivity determination for transitional economies like China.I show that factor market distortions can affect firms’decision-making in terms of innovation,production,and entry/exit,which offset the reallocation effects driven by firm innovations,and eventually result in aggregate productivity losses.Empirical analysis reveals that firm innovation can lead to resource reallocations from non-innovators toward innovating firms.However,factor market distortions misallocate resources and distort firms’decisions to innovate and exit,which ultimately offsets the resource reallocation effect arising from firm innovations.The productivity growth of the Chinese manufacturing industry is mostly driven by firm-level productivity improvements,while the contribution of across-firm resource reallocations is small.Resource reallocations between innovating and non-innovating firms do not significantly contribute to aggregate industry productivity growth.