中国地方政府科技财政支出对企业创新产出的影响研究——来自工业企业数据库的证据

Effects of Local Expenditure for Science and Technology on Firm Innovation:Evidence from Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database

自主创新是中国重要的国家战略之一,各级政府纷纷给予企业创新活动多方面的财政支持。然而,经济地理学很少考察政府财政支持对创新的具体效应,其他学科对这一问题的研究也缺乏定论。为弥补这一缺憾,本文运用工业企业数据库的大样本数据和多层次回归模型,分析了全国地级市政府科技财政支出对当地企业创新产出的影响。研究结果表明,地方政府对创新的支持效果存在异质性。从全国整体情况看,地方政府科技支出对企业创新产出的影响不显著,但东部地区、大城市例外;政府科技支出对国企和大中型企业的促进作用更强。该结论对于政府检视地方政府科技扶持政策效果和调整政府在科技创新方面的财政分配方案具有参考意义。

Promotion of independent innovation is one of the major national strategies in China. Both the central and local states have provided a lot of fiscal subsidies for innovation activities of corporations. However,not many studies in economic geography have paid attention on this issue. While the economists and management researchers have done some initial analyses of the association between subsidies or tax remission provided by government on firm innovation, the theoretical perspectives are contradictory and the empirical evidences are inconsistent. Moreover, few studies have considered the inter-level interactions on this issue. This paper tries to narrow the gap by examining the effects of local fiscal expenditures for science and technology on firm innovation based on multi-level regression models. The data is drawn from China City Statistical Yearbook and Chinese Industrial Enterprises Database, which are by far the most comprehensive and widely used database of manufacturing enterprises in China. It is found that the local fiscal expenditures for science and technology has insignificant effects on innovation performance of manufacturing firms at the national level. However, further analyses reveal that local fiscal expenditures for science and technology do promote firm innovation in the eastern China or the large cities with population over 2 million. Fiscal expenditures for science and technology also has significant and positive effects on large corporations or state-owned firms. These findings have important policy implications.