政府补助与企业创新能力:一个新的实证发现

Government Subsidies and Corporate Innovation Capability: A New Empirical Finding

财政政策是激励企业创新与发展的外在推动力,但政府的财政补助与企业创新效果之间究竟是怎样的关系呢?这一直是学术界与实践界争论的话题。一般认为政府补助会促进企业创新,但也有研究发现,政府补助的数量规模、补助项目重点分布、补助时间等不同因素会对企业创新产生不同的影响。为此,本文在界定企业创新能力概念与维度的基础上,利用2010—2018年中国A股上市公司数据,全面地考察了政府补助对企业创新能力的影响,并基于企业规模、产品市场竞争、知识产权保护进行了异质性检验。研究发现:政府补助规模与企业创新能力呈浅U型关系,即只有当补助规模超过适度值后,政府补助才能真正提高企业创新能力,具体表现为创新质量、创新效率及创新可持续性这三方面的整体提升;进一步的异质性检验结果显示,上述浅U型关系仅在大型企业及高知识产权保护下成立,高市场竞争强度下政府补助与创新质量之间是正向的线性关系。研究结果表明,政府补助发放的过程中应"抓重点,重质量,轻数量",以避免由于补助规模较小所导致的负向影响;并且,政府补助可更多地向重点企业倾斜,如大型企业以及处于高市场竞争强度与高知识产权保护中的企业。

As a common fiscal policy to encourage corporate innovation and development,do government subsidies really promote corporate innovation?At present,the academic circle and practice circle have not yet come to a unified conclusion.Therefore,this paper examines the actual impact of government subsidies from the perspective of corporate innovation capabilities.And the heterogeneity test is carried out based on enterprise scale,product market competition and intellectual property protection.The empirical results show that:(1)The scale of government subsidies has a shallow U-shaped relationship with the innovation capabilities.The U-shaped relationship means that only when the subsidies scale exceeds the appropriate value,the government subsidies can truly play its role in alleviating financing constraints and reducing innovation risks,thereby improving the quality,efficiency and sustainability of corporate innovation.Otherwise,it is easy to produce negative effects such as squeezing out the company’s own R&D investment and the company’s rent-seeking subsidies,thereby reducing the corporate innovation capabilities.(2)The above shallow U-shaped relationship is only established under the protection of large enterprises and high intellectual property rights.The relationship between government subsidies and innovation quality under high market competition intensity is not a U-shaped relationship,but a positive linear relationship.The research conclusions of this article show that government subsidies and corporate innovation capabilities present a U-shaped relationship,and there is some heterogeneity.So two aspects of subsidies scale and allocation structure need to be paid attention to ensure the positive effect of government subsidies on the improvement of corporate innovation capabilities.First of all,in terms of the scale of subsidies,the government can further increase subsidies.If the total subsidy amount is fixed,then it should give priority to subsidizing companies and reduce the number of subsidized companies.In order to increase the available amount of a single enterprise,to ensure that the scale of subsidies obtained by the enterprise exceeds the appropriate value,so as to play to the positive role of government subsidies in promoting the corporate innovation capabilities.In addition,when the amount of government subsidies exceeds a moderate value,subsidies can prompt enterprises to make innovation decisions that focus on long-term development.That is,government subsidies can play a long-term mechanism at the micro level of enterprises.To this end,the government can further introduce and improve relevant policies and systems to enhance the motivation of enterprises to continuously improve their innovation capabilities in the long-term,and provide guarantees and measures required for the innovation process.Secondly,in terms of configuration structure,it can be more inclined to some enterprises.The findings of this article show that small and medium-sized enterprises and enterprises under the protection of low intellectual property rights,subsidies cannot really enhance their innovation capabilities.This suggests that the government can select large enterprises and those under high intellectual property protection.In addition,under high market competition intensity,there is a positive linear relationship between government subsidies and innovation quality.This shows that in this type of companies,government subsidies are more likely to play a positive role in promoting.Therefore,we must increase subsidies for companies with high competition in the product market to ease the constraints on the improvement of corporate innovation quality caused by tight R&D funds.