融资约束、创新能力与企业协同创新

Financial Constraints,Innovative Capability and Firms' Collaborative Innovation

随着技术结构日益复杂,协同研发逐渐成为企业实现创新的重要方式。本文通过构建一个简单的理论模型,提出融资约束和创新能力会抑制企业协同研发的研究假说。据此,本文利用2012年世界银行调查问卷数据中关于中国企业的样本对以上模型进行检验。实证结果表明:在相同条件下,企业融资约束越宽松、创新能力越弱时,其协同研发的意愿及支出均相对越高,其中创新能力的负面作用来自于企业专有能力的不足。此外本文还发现,企业在面临激烈的产品市场竞争时,融资约束对自身研发、协同研发的抑制效应会更明显。据此结论本文提出,政府可以通过完善金融服务体系、加强知识产权保护、鼓励企业纵向合作来促进企业参与协同创新,从而加快企业转型升级。

Chinese economy has stepped into a ＂new normal＂ status, focusing more on balanced growth than before. How China can continue innovating in its industrial transformation and upgrading is the most important topic for Chinese economists. It seems that cooperation between firms is meaningful for industrial transformation and upgrading, especially as firms face more complicated technology. Besanko ＆ Wu （2013） show that many developed countries already encourage firms in the same product markets to engage in collaborative innovation such as joint research ventures. Some evidence from industries in China indicates that such cooperation can reduce costs based on economy of scale, enhance firms＇ R＆D efficiency, and improve innovation. However, little research has focused on collaborative innovation in China, and little is known about the factors that play an important role in determining a firm＇s participation in collaborative innovation. In this paper, we build a simple theoretical model for profit maximization. Based on the model, we hypothesize that financial constraints and innovative capability impede collaborative R＆D. This model proposes that whether a firm participates in collaborative innovation is determined by its financial constraints and how effectively it can appropriate its rents from innovative activities. On the one hand, it is well recognized that financial constraints restrict firms＇ R＆D investment because they lack collateral value for proprietary knowledge-based assets and due to the nature of information asymmetry （Brown et al. , 2009; Hsu et al. , 2014）. On the other hand, the more interesting but not so intuitive finding is that innovative capability plays a negative role in collaborative R＆D activities. As a result, we adopt the concept of appropriability following Cassiman ＆ Veugelers （2002） to explain why that is the case. Due to underdeveloped intellectual property protection, Chinese firms may have fewer effective strategies to prevent their proprietary knowledge-based assets from flowing to their competitors, which is why firms with higher innovative capability are more reluctant to engage in collaborative innovation. Motivated by this prediction, we try to verify our theoretical model by using data on small and medium-sized enterprises in China taken from the World Bank＇s 2012 Enterprise Surveys. Following the settings in Cassiman ＆ Veugelers （2006） , we apply a probit model to investigate factors that influence the individual R＆D decision and the collaborative R＆D decision, and a tobit model to explore factors that influence the expenditure of individual R＆D and collaborative R＆D. The empirical results are consistent with the theoretical implications after controlling for known factors, the industry effect, and the area effect. Moreover, we find that the negative effect of financial constraints is more prominent when the product market competition is more intense. We also conduct various robustness checks and further discuss absorbing ability and appropriability. All in all, the risk of leaking core information about R＆D impedes the benefit from collaborative innovation. Accordingly, we argue that the government should establish funds to finance collaborative innovation and strengthen intellectual property protection to encourage firms to engage in collaborative innovation activities, which should thereby accelerate the Chinese economy＇s transformation and upgrading. Our paper is distinct from other studies related to collaborative innovation in China, providing theoretical implications as well as empirical evidence that financial constraints impede not only a firm＇s own R＆D but also collaborative R＆D. This finding complements the work of Brown et al. （2009） and many other subsequent studies. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, we are the first to follow Cassiman ＆ Veugelers （2002, 2006） in formally distinguishing absorbing ability from appropriability with a dataset for China. Thus, we can explore the channel through which innovative capability affects collaborative innovation. Moreover, we consider the roles of product market competition and financial constraints.