融资约束、营运资本管理与企业创新可持续性

Financing Constraints, Working Capital Management and the Persistence of Firm Innovation

本文使用1998—2008年中国非上市公司工业企业数据,分析了融资约束、营运资本管理与企业创新活动之间的关系,旨在解释中国企业自上世纪末至今持续增加的创新活动。高的调整成本和不稳定的融资来源制约着企业的创新活动,本文检验了营运资本在突破创新约束中所起的作用,发现营运资本对缓冲企业创新投资波动有重要作用,而且这种作用与企业的融资约束程度密切相关。本文按照Hadlock & Pierce(2009)提出的SA指数法测量了企业的相对融资约束程度,发现企业受到的融资约束越严重,营运资本对创新的平滑作用越突出。本文的研究表明,虽然中国资本市场不发达,中国企业仍然可以通过内部资金积累和营运资本管理持续地进行创新活动。

This paper uses a panel of Chinese unlisted industrial enterprises over the period 1998--2008 to analyze the relationship between financial constraint, working capital management and enterprise innovation, by which it explains the enterprise innovation boom in China ever since the end of last century from micro perspective. The contribution of this paper is to directly examine whether working capital used to overcome the bottle that constraints the innovation investment, due to the high adjustment cost and volatility of financing resources. We find that working capital plays an important role on smoothing innovation activities. According to SA index raised by Hadlock ＆ Pierce （2009） , we grouped the whole sample into four categories and find that the more serious financing constraints the enterprises suffer, the more important role the working capital plays. Our study shows that though China＇s capital market is undeveloped, Chinese firms can keep innovation going stably by internal fund and working capital management.