容错纠错机制何以激励国企创新?

Can the Fault-tolerance and Error-correction Mechanisms Promote the Innovation of State-owned Enterprises?

在强调经济高质量发展的时代背景下,作为推动创新驱动发展战略实施的“排头兵”,国有企业被赋予了更多的责任与使命。文章基于双重差分模型考察了容错纠错机制对国有企业创新活动的影响及其背后的作用机理。计量结果显示,容错纠错机制的实施显著提升了国有企业的研发投入,经过一系列的稳健性测试后,该结论依然成立。机制检验证实,容错纠错机制通过提升风险承担和完善公司治理进而促进了国有企业的研发投入。异质性分析表明,股权激励和晋升激励有助于强化容错纠错机制对国有企业的创新激励效应,而货币薪酬激励则没有显著影响。进一步研究发现,容错纠错机制的实施不仅增加了国有企业的创新产出数量,而且还提升了其创新产出质量。这一方面表现为发明专利和实用新型专利显著增加,而外观设计专利没有明显变化;另一方面表现为创新产出的价值增值能力显著提升。上述结论表明,实施容错纠错机制,提高对创新失败的容忍度,同时辅以股权激励和晋升激励机制有助于提升国有企业的创新水平,进而助力经济高质量发展。

As the pioneer of China’s innovation-driven development,state-owned enterprises have been given more responsibilities and missions.However,scholars cannot tell whether state-owned enterprises can undertake such an essential task or not.The root cause lies in the agency problem caused by“owners’absence”in state-owned enterprises and soft budget constraint problems accompanying state-owned property rights.Therefore,privatization was once considered a practical path for the reform of state-owned enterprises.Some previous studies show that state-owned enterprises’operating efficiency can be significantly improved after privatization.Subsequently,more and more researches find that the potential costs or losses brought about by the privatization reform path may be huge.The performance is that after the privatization of stateowned enterprises,their innovation level has not been significantly improved,but has accelerated the loss of state-owned assets.Since then,scholars’discussions on the innovation activities of state-owned enterprises have gradually transitioned from the perspective of privatization to the premise of ensuring state-owned properties.What kind of supervision and incentive mechanism will be able to promote the innovation of stateowned enterprises?In 2016,under the guidance of General Secretary Xi Jinping,Report on the Work of the Government emphasized sound incentive mechanisms and fault-tolerance and error-correction mechanisms,and state-owned enterprises have successively started to implement these mechanisms.This provides a good opportunity to examine whether and how the design of the incentive mechanisms of state-owned enterprises affects innovation.Using the staggered-DID model,the primary findings document that fault-tolerance and error-correction mechanisms can not only encourage state-owned enterprise executives to innovate through the risk-taking mechanism,but also relieve the agency problem of executives in the innovation process through the supervision and governance mechanism,thereby helping the improvement of the innovation level of state-owned enterprises.In addition,we also find that fault-tolerance and error-correction mechanisms can not only increase the number of the innovations of state-owned enterprises,but also improve the quality of their innovations,manifested in a significant increase in invention patents and utility model patents.This research has the following policy implications:Innovation is the key to tapping the new potential of China’s economic growth.The establishment of fault-tolerance and error-correction mechanisms in stateowned enterprises should be accelerated to promote the technological innovation and the transformation and upgrading of state-owned enterprises,thereby contributing to the high-quality development of the national economy.In order to maximize the innovation incentive effect produced by the fault-tolerance and error-correction mechanisms of state-owned enterprises,more effective equity incentives and promotion incentives should also be supplemented.