“限房令”可以促进企业技术创新吗?—基于中央企业的准自然实验

Does “the Restriction of Real Estate Investment” Facilitate Technology Innovation?——Evidence from a Quasi-natural Experiment of Central State-owned Enterprises

已有研究表明,房地产热挤占了企业的研发投入,对技术创新不利。那么,企业退出房地产业务能否带来技术创新的显著提升呢?文章基于2010年国务院国资委针对中央企业出台的"限房令"准自然实验,考察了企业退出房地产市场是否促进了技术创新。使用2005-2014年A股上市公司数据和双重差分模型的实证结果表明:"限房令"出台以后,相对于不受该政策影响的企业而言,受该政策影响而被强制退出房地产业务的中央企业的技术创新水平显著增加;然而,这一促进效应未能长期保持;"限房令"对技术创新的作用与企业此前涉入房地产业务的程度密切相关。进一步的分组检验和机制分析还发现,在政治晋升机会较高、公司治理较差的子样本中,"限房令"的效果更加明显;"限房令"主要通过降低企业的固定资产投资和提高研发投入两个机制促进了企业技术创新。文章不仅提供了"非房地产企业退出房地产业务有助于企业技术创新"的直接证据,而且从微观视角拓展了对房地产热经济后果的研究,可为政策制定提供一定参考。

Summary： Since the commercialization of housing in China in 1998, the total investment in real estate has increased from the initial 0.36 trillion yuan to 10.26 trillion yuan in 2016, with an average annual growth rate of 20%. A characteristic fact is that the sharp increase in real estate investment comes not only from tradi- tional real estate companies, but also from a large number of non-real estate enterprises that are attracted by high returns and investments in real estate through equity participation, joint ventures, mergers or acquisitions,or subsidiaries and branches. The rapid spread of these behaviors will inevitably have a profound impact on the micro-enterprises themselves, and the entire real economy. In theory, on the one hand, enterprises investing in real estate business which is easy to appreciate have credit mitigation effects that they can alleviate their own financing constraints through getting loan mortgages or sales. On the other hand, since the operation of real estate business requires a large amount of capital invest- ment and it is easy to get profit in the short term, enterprises have the resource reallocation effect that they de- viate from their main business and tend to be hollow. The existing research shows that the impact of housing prices on microeconomic individuals is diverse, depending on the relative strength of multiple effects. As re- gard to the relevant literature in this article, Chaney and Thesmar （2012）, Yu and Tan （2015） have found that the increase of the real estate price has a positive effect on financing and investment. However, a large number of studies support the resource reallocation effect that they deviate from their main business and slow the pace of innovation （ Chen, et al., 2015 ）. The existing studies provide a good foundation for analyzing the impact of real estate on the real eco- nomy, but will corporate innovation increase after it withdraws from real estate business？ Based on the quasi- natural experiment of ＂the restriction of real estate investment＂ issued by the Administration Commission of the State Council and State-owned Assets Supervision in relation to central enterprises in 2010, this article uses the 2005--2014 A-share listed company data and the DID model to examine whether non-real estate in- dustrial enterprises withdrawing from the real estate market have promoted innovation. We find that the com- panies affected by the policy has more significantly improved the level of innovation compared to the compan- ies that are not affected by the policy. However, this promotion effect has only been effective for a short peri- od of time and has not been able to maintain for a long time. In addition, the role of the policy for innovation has been closely related to the extent to the companies which have previously been involved in real estate busi- ness. That means the higher the level of investing in real estate business is, the greater the impact of＂the re- striction of real estate investment＂ is. Furthermore, we also find that samples in the group with high political promotion opportunities and poor corporate governance make significant improvement in the creation; ＂the re- striction of real estate investment＂ promotes enterprises＇ innovation mainly through the investment in fixed as- sets of enterprises and raising R＆D expenditure. The main contributions of the article are as following： （ 1 ）The existing literature remains at the macro level to discuss the important topic about how real estate affects the technological innovation. This article is not only based on the empirical data of micro-enterprises, but also focuses on the impact of withdrawing from rather than entering the real estate business on the technological innovation, and it provides direct evidence that non-real estate enterprises can promote the technological innovation by withdrawing from real estate busi- ness; （2） This article uses the quasi-natural experiment of＂the restriction of real estate investment＂ issued by the Administration Commission of the State Council and State-owned Assets Supervision in relation to central enterprises in 2010. It provides a causal identification between technological innovations by DID and Triple Difference. （3） This article further studies the heterogeneity of＂the restriction of real estate investment＂ in dif- ferent situations and the specific mechanism that can improve the technological innovation.