新能源汽车产业政策何以激励企业技术创新?

How the NEV industry policies stimulate technological innovation of enterprises?

近年来,中国先后推出了“扶持性”和“门槛性”两种类型的新能源汽车产业政策。本文基于中国新能源汽车上市公司数据,使用双重差分模型,检验了“扶持性”政策和“门槛性”政策对企业技术创新的影响及其机制。研究结果发现:(1)“扶持性”和“门槛性”政策都激励了企业技术创新;就单个政策而言,“门槛性”政策比“扶持性”政策的创新激励效应更大;但两种政策的创新激励存在互补效应,其政策协同比单一政策对企业技术创新激励效应更大。系列稳健性检验之后我们的结论依然成立。(2)机制检验表明,“扶持性”政策通过加大研发强度等资源补偿效应激励企业创新;而“门槛性”政策的创新激励效应与市场竞争的程度密切相关,只有适度的市场竞争才会激励企业技术创新。(3)两类政策对创新激励的影响存在企业和地区方面的异质性。本文拓展了新能源汽车产业政策(类型)影响企业创新的相关研究,为新能源汽车产业政策优化以持续促进汽车产业高质量发展提供了经验参考。

China′s new energy vehicles is a strategic emerging industry,which is urgent for the government to implement relevant industrial policies to support them.Since 2009,the Chinese government has successively introduced"supportive"policies by means of subsidies and incentives and"threshold"policies by means of standard constraints in order to accelerate the development of the new energy vehicle industry.Although the development of the new energy vehicle industry cannot be separated from the support of various"supportive"policies,unreasonable"supportive"policies also lead to enterprises to carry out"strategic"innovation,fabricate false sales data and other"fraud"problems.Under this situation,it is particularly important to evaluate the"supportive"and"threshold"policy innovation incentive effects of new energy vehicles,and study which type of policy tools can better adapt to the current development of China′s new energy vehicle industry and help China to move from a big automobile country to an automobile power.Theoretical studies on the innovation incentive effect of new energy vehicle industry policy mainly focus on two types:"supportive"and"threshold".For example,Dosi et al.(2006)and Chi et al.(2022)found that the"supportive"policy effectively stimulated the technological innovation of enterprises;A single"supportive"policy may disturb the market order(Dosi,1988);Different combinations of"supportive"policy tools have different impacts on innovation(Wang and Zhang,2020),and both tax incentives and financial subsidies can promote the technological innovation of new energy vehicle enterprises.ZEV credits policies such as"double credits"have also significantly promoted the R&D investment of new energy vehicle enterprises(Melton et al.,2016;Li and Xiong,2021);Based on product attribute catalog standards,enterprises may"seek subsidies"for production instead of innovation(Chen et al.,2021).Compared with the previous studies,this paper provides a new perspective to test the similarities and differences between the two types of new energy vehicle industrial policies in terms of stimulating technological innovation.Based on the difference-in-difference model and a unified empirical analysis framework,this paper selects listed companies in the new energy vehicle industry from 2007 to 2018 as research samples and compares the innovation incentive effect and mechanism of the single policy and the synergy of the two policies.We find that:(1)Both types of policies have stimulated technological innovation of enterprises;the"threshold"policy has a greater innovation incentive effect than the"supportive"policy,and there are complementary effects between the two types of policies;the synergy of the two types of policies has a greater incentive effect on enterprise technological innovation than a single policy type.Our conclusions remain reliable after a series of robustness tests.(2)The mechanism test found that the"supportive"policies stimulated enterprise innovation by increasing R&D intensity and other resource compensation effects;while the innovation incentive effect of"threshold"policies was closely related to the degree of market competition:moderate market competition increases the incentive effect of the"threshold"policy on enterprise innovation,while excessive market competition inhibits the effect.(3)There is heterogeneity found at firm and regional level.Based on the above conclusions,this paper draws the following policy implications.First,the government should pay attention to the complementary coordination of"supportive"and"threshold"policies when formulating industrial policies.Second,promote industrial policies for new energy vehicles in an orderly way.In the implementation of"supportive"policy,we should give full play to the positive role of resource compensation in promoting enterprise innovation.When implementing"threshold"policies,we should adhere to market leadership and government guidance.Third,the government should accurately implement new energy vehicle industrial policies and continue to promote high-quality development of the new energy vehicle industry.