研发补贴与融资约束：信号效应的检验

R&D Subsidies and Financing Constraints:Based on the Signaling Theory

研发补贴一直被政府视为缓解企业融资约束的重要手段,已有文献对于研发补贴的研究主要强调其资源效应,却忽略了研发补贴对于缓解企业融资约束的信号效应。文章选取2008-2015年沪深A股上市公司的数据,探讨了研发补贴、信息不对称与企业融资约束之间的关系。结果表明,融资约束问题仍然普遍存在于中国企业之中,而研发补贴可以有效缓解企业融资约束。进一步的研究发现,"信号效应"是研发补贴缓解企业融资约束的一个重要的隐藏机制,它通过降低企业与外部投资者之间的信息不对称问题增加更多的外源融资。最后,文章通过研发补贴的"信号效应"的异质性分析,发现研发补贴对于中小规模的、处于成长阶段的、低市场化程度地区和动荡的行业环境中的企业影响更大。

R&D subsidies have been well established as an important way to alleviate corporate financing constraints. The existing literature on R&D subsidies mainly focuses on its resource effects: As the role of cash resources supported by government agencies with free of charge,R&D subsidies can share the cost and risk of new product innovation,and as unabsorbed organizational slack,it can ensure firm innovation to continue. However,the initial investment of R&D activities is vast,which cannot be covered by government subsidies solely. Therefore,external financing(including debt financing and equity financing) has become an important way to fill the funding gap of R&D investment. Then,with the exception of resource effects brought by direct subsidies,do government R&D subsidies have other effects? We argue that R&D subsidies can also be regarded as an informational signal to release firms’ technological capabilities to the external capital market. R&D subsidies are the screening results based on comparisons between intra-industry and inter-industry and technical ability evaluations of firms themselves. In the process of applying for R&D subsidies,the low-quality firms need to pay higher costs compared with the high-quality ones,thus there is a separation equilibrium between high-quality and lowquality firms. Also,fearing of the disclosure of R&D information by external investors,firms are willing to disclose their R&D information to government agencies,so that government agencies have more information advantages in judging firm quality. To sum up,R&D subsidies are the"certification" made by the government for firm technical capability and market potential. We believe that it can alleviate the information asymmetry between firms and external investors,as well as the constraints on R&D financing.Using the data of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2008 to 2015,we investigate the relationship between R&D subsidies,information asymmetry and corporate financing constraints. The results show that R&D subsidies can effectively alleviate information asymmetry problems,and the results are robust after ruling out the endogenous problems.Furthermore,based on cash-cash flow sensitivity proposed by Almeida,et al.(2004),this paper finds that financing constraints are prevalent in Chinese firms,and R&D subsidies can alleviate corporate financing constraints. Additionally,the "signal effect" is found as an important mechanism of R&D subsidies alleviating corporate financing constraints,because it can increase more external financing by reducing information asymmetry between firms and external investors.Finally,the heterogeneity analysis of the "signal effect" shows that the effect is greater for SEMS in the early lifestyle,low-marketization regions and turbulent environment.