预算软约束与企业技术创新

Budget Soft Constraints and Corporate Technological Innovation

长期以来,预算软约束大多作为“负面角色”为学术界所诟病。然而,本文理论分析认为,预算软约束实际上是债权人对企业更高程度的失败容忍,这种容忍降低了企业创新面临的风险和融资约束,从而促进了企业的技术创新。本文利用2010—2018年中国上市企业面板数据对以上理论推断进行了检验。结果显示,企业面临的预算软约束程度越高,其创新投入和创新产出越多。进一步研究发现:预算软约束对企业技术创新的促进作用在非国有企业中更强;预算软约束对企业策略性创新的促进作用要强于对实质性创新的促进作用。本文的研究结果表明,预算软约束对企业尤其是非国有企业的技术创新存在积极作用,但这种积极作用更多地表现为对企业策略性创新的促进,这在一定程度上为我国企业创新能力虽有所提升,但仍缺乏核心技术突破的现象提供了解释。

For a long time,budget soft constraints have been criticized by the academic community as “negative roles”.However,the theoretical analysis of this paper argues that the budget soft constraints are actually higher degree of failure tolerance of the creditor to the enterprises.This tolerance lowers the risk and financing constraints faced by enterprises,which is beneficial to corporate technological innovation.The paper uses the panel data of Chinese listed enterprises from 2010-2018 to test the above theoretical inference.The results show that the higher the degree of budget soft constraints enterprises face,the more their innovation input and innovation output.Further research finds that:first,compared with state-owned enterprises,the budget soft constraints have a stronger effect on the innovation of non-state-owned enterprises;second,compared with the substantive innovation,the budget soft constraints have a stronger effect on the strategic innovation.The research results reflect that the budget soft constraints have a positive effect on the technological innovation of enterprises,especially non-state-owned enterprises,but this positive effect is more manifested in the promotion of strategic innovation of enterprises.To a certain extent,this provides an explanation for the phenomenon that although the innovation ability of Chinese enterprises has been improved,there is still a lack of breakthroughs in core technologies.