政府创新补贴提升数字经济企业研发强度了吗?

Do the Government's Innovation Subsidies Increase the R&D intensity of Digital Enterprises?

在不断做强做优做大我国数字经济的战略背景下,政府创新补贴作为重要的产业政策工具,如何有效发挥其积极作用,是否能够提升数字经济企业研发强度,值得进一步研究。本文基于国家统计局公布的《数字经济及其核心产业统计分类(2021)》,科学界定数字经济企业范围,在此基础上,以2012—2020年中国A股上市公司为样本,通过手工收集和关键词筛选方法获取政府创新补贴数据,系统探讨了政府创新补贴对数字经济企业研发强度的影响效应。研究发现,政府创新补贴显著提升了数字经济企业的研发强度,该结论在稳健性分析中依然成立。异质性分析表明,政府创新补贴对于成长期、高技术行业及制度环境较差地区的数字经济企业研发强度具有更为显著的影响效应。进一步的拓展性分析发现,政府创新补贴与数字经济企业私人研发强度存在显著的倒U型关系,且我国当前针对数字经济企业的政府创新补贴还处于倒U型的左侧底部。同时发现,政府创新补贴对数字经济企业研发强度的影响效应不具有动态性。本文的研究拓展和丰富了数字产业化及政府补贴效应等相关领域文献,为数字经济时代与高质量发展背景下优化政府创新补贴政策,更好地做强做优做大我国数字经济提供了重要启示。

Developing the digital economy is a strategic choice to seize the new opportunities of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation.However,the development of China's digital economy still faces prominent problems and challenges such as“insufficient innovation capabilities in key areas,and the situation where the industrial chain and supply chain are constrained by other countries has not fundamentally changed”.Therefore,on the new journey of comprehensively building a socialist modernized country,how to promote the innovative development of digital economy enterprises is a major practical problem that China faces in building an internationally competitive digital industry cluster and strengthening and optimizing the digital economy.Compared with general economic forms,digital economic innovation has many new features,such as higher innovation frequency,stronger externality,and wider coverage.At the same time,there is a synergistic development characteristic between digital industrialization and industrial digitization,which leads to a serious“coordination failure”problem in the innovation of digital economy enterprises.Therefore,in theory,the R&D and innovation of digital economy enterprises face a more serious problem of“market failure”,so the research and development of digital economy enterprises cannot be separated from government support.As an important industrial policy tool,government innovation subsidies are an important means to support the research and development innovation of digital economy enterprises.So,has government innovation subsidies incentivized the research and development intensity of digital economy enterprises?Are there differences in the impact effects among different types of enterprises?Do government innovation subsidies have additional incentive and dynamic effects?In order to answer the above questions,this paper uses the“Statistical Classification of Digital Economy and Its Core Industries(2021)”and data of Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2020,obtains government innovation subsidy data through manual collection and keyword selection methods,and empirically examines the impact of government innovation subsidies on the research and development intensity of digital economy enterprises.The results indicate that government innovation subsidies significantly stimulate the research and development intensity of digital economy enterprises.The result of heterogeneity analysis shows that government innovation subsidies have a more significant impact on the R&D intensity of digital economy enterprises in growth periods,high-tech industries,and lower institutional environments.Further expansion analysis reveals a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between government innovation subsidies and private R&D intensity of digital economy enterprises,and China's current government innovation subsidies for digital economy enterprises are still at the bottom left of the inverted U-shaped relationship.In addition,the impact of government innovation subsidies on the research and development intensity of digital economy enterprises is not dynamic.Compared with existing literature,the marginal contribution of this paper are as follows.Firstly,it enriches and expands the relevant research on digital industrialization.The existing literature mainly focuses on the connotation and characteristics of the digital economy,scale calculation,and related research on industrial digitization,while there is clearly insufficient research on digital industrialization,especially research and development in the digital industry;Secondly,this paper enriches and expands the relevant literature on the relationship between government subsidies and enterprise innovation.Most literature in this field focuses on the total amount of government subsidies,without strictly distinguishing between government innovation subsidies and general government subsidies.Thirdly,in the context of the digital economy era and high-quality development,the conclusions of this paper provide policy insights from the perspective of government innovation subsidies to enhance the R&D and innovation capabilities of digital economy enterprises,build digital industry clusters with international competitiveness,and strengthen and optimize the digital economy.