跨境电商改革与企业创新——基于跨境电商综合试验区设立的准自然实验

Cross-borderE-commerce Reform and Enterprise Innovation-Based on a Quasi-natural Experiment of the Establishment of Cross-border E-commerce Integrated Pilot Zones

跨境电子商务作为一种新兴的外贸业态,为提升企业创新能力提供了新的契机。本文以跨境电商综合试验区的设立为准自然实验,使用2011—2020年中国上市公司的数据,采用多期双重差分模型考察了跨境电商改革对企业创新能力的影响。研究发现,跨境电商改革显著增加了试验区内企业申请专利的数量,这一结论在一系列的稳健性检验之后依然成立。机制检验表明,这种影响主要通过增加企业利润,促进技术溢出和推动制造业服务业融合等得以实现。异质性分析显示,跨境电商改革主要提高了数字基础设施完善、政府资源配置能力强的地区企业的创新能力;同时,跨境电商改革扩大了创新主体范围,在规模较小和创新能力较低的企业中发挥了更加突出的创新激励作用。本文还进一步分析了综合试验区的空间效应,发现试验区内企业专利申请数量的增加来自于自身的净增长,对周边城市的创新存量资源不存在虹吸效应。本研究为更高效地发挥跨境电商综合试验区的创新功能提供了经验证据支撑。

Cross-border e-commerce has emerged as a new form of foreign trade that provides opportunities to enhance enterprise innovation capacity.Using the establishment of cross-border e-commerce integrated pilot zones as a quasi-natural experiment,this paper builds a multi-period difference-in-differences model to evaluate the effects of crossborder e-commerce reform on enterprise innovation based on the panel data of Chinese listed firms from 2011 to 2020.The benchmark regression shows that the cross-border e-commerce reform significantly increases the number of patent applications of firms in pilot zones,which remains stable after a series of robustness tests.The mechanism analysis shows that the impact is achieved mainly by increasing enterprise profits,technology spillovers,and promoting the integration of manufacturing and services industries.The heterogeneity analysis finds that cross-border e-commerce reform mainly improves the innovation ability of enterprises in cities with good digital infrastructure and strong government resource allocation ability.Meanwhile,the smaller and less innovative firms benefit more from the reform,which enables more enterprises to engage in innovation activities.Finally,our further investigation into the spatial effect of integrated pilot zones reveals that the innovation incentive of pilot zones is not a spatial reallocation effect of innovation stock resources of neighboring cities but rather a net growth effect.This paper provides empirical evidence for the more efficient utilization of cross-border e-commerce integrated pilot zones'innovative functions.