法律保护能否提升企业创新质量?

Can legal protection improve the quality of enterprise innovation?

中国经济发展仍然受到创新质量不高和法律保护不完善的制约,本文基于2009—2016年中国制造业上市公司专利申请数据,分析了法律保护对企业创新质量的平均效应及影响机制。研究发现:法律保护对企业实质性创新和总体创新质量有显著的正向促进作用,对策略性创新有一定的抑制效应;基于多重中介模型的分析表明,法律保护可以通过资金效应、技术效应和信息效应促进企业实质性创新,其中技术效应是当下法律保护影响企业创新质量的主导中介效应。相比提升效率,法律保护的公正、执行、透明度以及法律中介组织更能促进企业开展实质性创新、提升企业创新质量,法律保护对非高科技企业、成熟企业的实质性创新和创新质量的正向影响更加明显。本文对进一步完善法律保护以有效促进创新发展具有重要借鉴意义。

Enterprise innovation is an important driving force to promote high-quality development of economy and an inevitable requirement of building a country strong on quality.Therefore,how to improve the innovation quality of China′s enterprises effectively has become increasingly the focus of attention from all walks of life.To this end,a series of policies have been issued by government to continuously strengthen the support for invention patents,guide the market and enterprises to pay more attention to invention patents,and realize the improvement of enterprise innovation quality.However,relying only on the active guidance and support of the government is not a long-term solution.It is essential and fundamental to promote the endogenous upgrading of enterprise innovation activities through market forces,which needs a strong legal protection.So far,the economic development of China is still constrained by the low-quality innovation and inadequate legal protection.Therefore,this paper deeply discusses the relationship between legal protection and innovation quality of China′s enterprises,hoping to further fill the research gaps in the field of"law and innovation",and provide theoretical references for legal protection and innovation development in China.Based on the analysis of enterprise innovation motivation,this paper assumes that the legal protection can increase the demand of substantive innovation,crowd out the strategic innovation,so as to improve the innovation quality of enterprises.In this paper,the indirect mechanism of capital effect,technology effect and information effect are theoretically assumed based on the three problems of"financing constraint","insufficient technology reserve"and"information asymmetry"faced by enterprises in the process of improving innovation quality.Based on the patent application data of listed companies in China′s manufacturing industry from 2009 to 2016,we analyze the average effect and influencing mechanism of legal protection on the innovation quality of enterprises.From the empirical results,we found that legal protection has a positive effect on promoting substantive innovation and overall innovation quality of enterprises,and has a certain inhibitory effect on strategic innovation.Besides,the analysis based on multiple intermediary models shows that legal protection can promote substantive innovation of enterprises through capital effect,technology effect and information effect,among which the technology effect is the dominant intermediary effect.Further research shows that compared with the improvement of judicial efficiency,justice,enforcement,transparency and legal intermediary organizations can better promote enterprises to carry out substantive innovation and improve the innovation quality.And legal protection has a more obvious positive impact on the substantive innovation and innovation quality of non-high-tech enterprises and mature enterprises.According to the research results,we draw out the following policy implications:First,the national judicial organs should strengthen the legal protection for the substantive innovation of enterprises,and implement different legal protections for innovation according to the characteristics of enterprises and the external environment.Second,it is essential to further protect and promote enterprises′trade credit,promote the long-term development of technology trading market,standardize the accounting information disclosure of listed companies,and strengthen the effective ways of legal protection to improve the enterprises′innovation quality.Finally,higher efficiency of legal protection should be established on the basis of ensuring impartiality,which also needs to break the dilemma of"law enforcement difficulty",increase the degree of legal openness,and support high-quality legal intermediary organizations in the market.Compared with the existing researches,the innovations of this paper lie in the followings:First,considering the level of innovation,this paper does a difference analysis on the relationship between law and innovation and reveals the possible impact of legal protection on the enterprises′innovation quality in a more comprehensive and in-depth way.Second,by introducing a parallel multiple mediation model,this paper clarifies the mechanism of legal protection producing innovation promotion effect,including capital,technology and information effect.We further analyze the influence legal protection of different dimensions and enterprise heterogeneity on the innovation incentive effect of legal protection,thus deepens the interpretation of the influence of legal protection on micro-enterprise innovation behavior,and provides a reliable reference and reasonable basis for the government to formulate and perfect relevant laws and policies.