中国企业创新为何重数量而轻质量——数量增长目标考核视角

Why do Chinese Enterprises Emphasize Quantity over Quality in Innovation:From the Perspective of Quantitative Growth Target Assessment

数量增长目标考核是中国创新政策的重要特色。由于政策实施过程中普遍存在信息问题和机会主义,数量增长目标考核会引发微观创新主体的适用性策略行为。文章通过手工搜集和匹配上市公司专利数据,建立双重差分模型,尝试从专利数量增长目标考核视角,考察中国2010年实施的《全国专利事业发展战略(2011-2020年)》这一重大创新战略对企业创新行为的影响,发现该战略对企业专利数量增长具有显著的促进作用,而对专利质量提升具有抑制效应,表明专利数量增长的目标考核会导致企业“重数量、轻质量”的专利申请行为。异质性分析的结果表明,民营企业以及创新能力偏低的企业更倾向于采取“重数量、轻质量”的专利申请行为。进一步,该战略主要通过财政补贴、税收优惠和信贷扶持等政策措施引导企业专利申请行为。这些结论为引导中国企业高质量创新行为的政策目标设计、政策工具选择及分类精准施策提供了有益启发。

In recent years,driven by the government s innovation policies,the R&D investment and the number of patent applications of Chinese enterprises have increased explosively.However,the growth of patent quality and innovation ability of enterprises as a whole is still relatively slow.Generally speaking,there is an obvious phenomenon of“emphasizing quantity and neglecting quality”in the innovation of Chinese enterprises.This paper holds that the assessment of quantity growth target is an important feature of China s innovation policy,which helps to explain the phenomenon of“emphasizing quantity and neglecting quality”in Chinese enterprise innovation.Taking“China s national patent development strategy(2011-2020)”issued in 2010 as an example,the central government formulates medium and long-term objectives in quantitative form,and then subcontracts the quantitative objectives to local governments through administrative contracting,and the lower level governments are responsible for completing the objective quantitative assessment requirements issued by the higher-level governments.However,due to the widespread information incompleteness,information asymmetry and opportunism in the process of policy implementation,the quantitative growth target assessment will lead to the applicability strategy behavior of micro innovation subjects.By manually collecting and matching the patent data of listed companies,this paper establishes a double difference model,and tries to investigate the impact of“China s national patent development strategy(2011-2020)”,a major innovation policy,on the innovation behavior of enterprises from the perspective of patent quantity growth target assessment.It is found that the policy has a significant promoting effect on the growth of enterprise patent quantity and a restraining effect on the improvement of patent quality.It shows that the examination system aiming at the growth of the number of patents will lead to the patent application behavior of“emphasizing quantity and neglecting quality”.The policy only leads the private enterprises and enterprises with weak innovation ability to the patent application behavior of“emphasizing the quality and neglecting the heterogeneity”;However,the policy has played a good role in guiding the innovation behavior of state-owned enterprises and enterprises with strong innovation ability,promoting the growth of the number of patent applications of these enterprises while maintaining the patent quality.Further,the strategy mainly guides the patent application behavior of enterprises through policies and measures such as financial subsidies,tax incentives and credit support.The main contributions of this paper are as follows:first,this paper examines the implementation process of innovation policies with Chinese characteristics from the new perspective of assessment of quantity growth target,and then provides a new theoretical explanation for the innovation behavior of Chinese enterprises“emphasizing quantity and neglecting quality”.Second,by analyzing the adaptive strategy selection behavior between the quantity of patents and the quality of patents,this paper reflects on the gains and losses of China s innovation policy,which provides useful inspiration for the design of policy objectives,the selection of policy tools and the accurate implementation of classified policies to guide the high-quality innovation behavior of Chinese enterprises in future.