地方科技创新目标约束、财政科技支出与城市创新

Target Constraints of Local Scientific and Technological Innovation,Fiscal Scientific and Technological Expenditure and Urban Innovation

在创新引领发展背景下,各地区呈现出创新竞争发展格局。基于2013-2019年我国各省市设立的科技创新目标,结合城市面板数据和城市创新指数数据,实证检验地方科技创新目标约束对城市创新的影响效应及作用机制。研究结果显示:总体而言,创新投入目标约束能够显著促进城市创新,但创新产出目标约束和创新企业目标约束对城市创新无显著影响。就作用机制而言,创新投入目标约束通过扩大财政科技支出提升城市创新水平。异质性分析结果表明,创新投入目标约束对城市创新的促进作用在东部地区显著,在中部地区和西部地区不显著。同时,采用门槛模型考察创新投入强度目标对城市创新的影响,发现当创新投入强度目标超过门槛值2.8%时,会抑制城市创新。

Innovation is the first driving force for achieving high-quality economic development and sustainable growth.The city is the space carrier of innovation activities,and the urban innovation system is an important part of the national innovation system.Therefore,it will help to enhance the overall national innovation strength by improving the urban innovation ability.In the context of Chinese decentralization,local governments have full autonomy of fiscal expenditure.As an important subject in the construction of urban innovation system,local government is a key link to guide and support innovation activities.Fiscal expenditure on science and technology which can directly improve the innovation investment level of the whole society is the basic means for local governments to participate in the construction of urban innovation system.With the deepening and implementation of the innovation driven development strategy,the assessment contents of officials by the central government have also changed significantly.GDP and other indicators of economic development speed are gradually replaced by indicators reflecting the quality of development such as scientific and technological innovation.As a result,the competition for growth between local governments around economic development has gradually been changed into a competition for innovation around fiscal expenditure on science and technology.Local officials tend to set scientific and technological innovation goals to present positive ability signals and loyalty to their superiors.In view of this,this paper empirically examines the impact of local scientific and technological innovation goal constraints on urban innovation and its impact mechanism.The study draws the following conclusions.Firstly among the three types of local scientific and technological innovation objectives,only the innovation input objective constraints can significantly promote the improvement of urban innovation level,and the impact of innovation output objective constraints and innovation enterprise objective constraints on urban innovation is not significant.Secondly the impact of local scientific and technological innovation target constraints on urban innovation is realized through fiscal expenditure on science and technology.It can significantly promote the improvement of fiscal expenditure on science and technology,and then promote the improvement of urban innovation level by setting innovation investment target constraints by local governments.Thirdly there is regional heterogeneity in the impact of local innovation investment target constraints on urban innovation.Specifically,in the eastern region,the target constraint of innovation investment significantly promotes the improvement of urban innovation level,but has no significant impact on the central and western regions.Lastly the impact of innovation investment intensity target on urban innovation has a threshold effect.When the target of innovation investment intensity is higher than 2.8%,it will significantly inhibit the improvement of urban innovation level.The policy implications of this paper are as follows.(1)The local governments should give priority to setting innovation investment targets.According to the government work reports of 280 cities in 2019,there are 176 cities setting the goal of innovative enterprises,and it is far greater than the number of innovation investment goals.In order to improve the level of urban innovation,local governments should give priority to setting innovation investment targets.(2)When setting the goal of scientific and technological innovation,local governments should fully consider the geographical location.Specifically,local governments in the central and western regions still focus on"competition for growth",which is not suitable for setting innovation investment targets.The eastern region has regional advantages,stronger government innovation preference and richer financial resources,which is more suitable for setting innovation investment targets.(3)Local governments need to further increase the proportion of fiscal expenditure on science and technology.According to the statistical bulletin of national science and technology investment in 2019,China's R&D investment intensity is 2.23%.Although it has reached a record high,it still lags the scientific and technological powers such as the United States(2.83%)and Japan(3.26%).Therefore,it is necessary to continue to increase financial support and give full play to the promotion and guiding role of fiscal expenditure on the R&D investment of the whole society.(4)When setting specific innovation investment intensity targets,local governments should balance the relationship between scientific and technological innovation targets and other targets such as economic growth targets,residents'employment targets and residents'income targets,reasonably control financial resources,and then improve the use efficiency of financial resources.