贸易政策不确定性对企业产品创新的影响——基于增长期权和金融摩擦视角的实证分析

The Impact of Trade Policy Uncertainty on Enterprises Product Innovation——An Empirical Analysis Based on the Perspective of Growth Option and Financial Friction

在全球经济环境不确定性日益增强背景下,提升企业创新水平对应对贸易冲突并且实现高质量发展至关重要。探究贸易政策不确定性影响企业产品创新行为的理论机制,发现贸易政策不确定性会分别通过增长期权机制和金融摩擦机制对企业产品创新产生促进和抑制效应,其总体影响取决于两种效应的相对大小。基于高度细化的中国微观企业层面数据,采用双重差分法检验贸易政策不确定性对企业产品创新概率和创新强度的影响,结果显示:虽然贸易政策不确定性的下降总体上会抑制企业产品创新概率和创新强度,但是这种创新抑制效应在出口状态不同的企业样本中表现出明显的异质性;纯内销企业样本中创新抑制效应表现得最为显著,同时参与出口和内销企业样本中的创新抑制效应不显著,而在纯出口企业样本中表现出显著的创新促进效应。

In the context of increasing global economic uncertainty,improving the level of corporate innovation is critical to coping with trade conflicts and enabling high-quality development.This paper explores the theoretical mechanism through which trade policy uncertainty affects enterprise product innovation behavior,and finds that trade policy uncertainty exerts two effects,promotion and suppression of firms'innovation through the growth option mechanism and the financial friction mechanism,respectively,the overall effect depends on the relative strengths of the two.Which effect is stronger?To address this question,based on the data of China's industrial enterprises,this paper employs the difference in differences(DID)method to empirically analyze the effects of trade policy uncertainty on firms'innovation probability and innovation intensity.The results show that although the decrease of trade policy uncertainty inhibits firms'innovation probability and intensity in general,this innovation suppression effect shows marked heterogeneity across firms with different export states,specifically,for firms that sell only in home market,the suppression effect is more significant,for firms that conduct ordinary trade,the suppression effect is no longer significant,while for firms selling especially in foreign markets,the promotion effect is more significant.