政府补贴能否促进技术创新由“量”到“质”转变——知识产权保护的门槛效应

Can Government Subsidies Promote Technological Innovation Transformation fromQuantity to Quality? A Threshold Effect Analysis Based on Intellectual Property Protection

在中国经济转型的关键时期,如何科学合理地设计知识产权保护制度,促进政府补贴的创新激励效应有效释放,实现技术创新由“量”到“质”转变,是中国经济能否顺利完成转轨的重要决定因素之一。基于2009—2020年中国内地30个省份平衡面板数据,利用非动态面板门槛回归技术实证考察政府补贴创新溢出红利的知识产权保护门槛效应。研究发现:政府补贴政策整体上促进技术创新数量上的增加,还实现了“质”的飞跃;东、中部地区政府补贴促进创新“质变”,西部地区却存在显著抑制现象;政府补贴的创新激励效应存在基于知识产权保护的双重门槛效应,其中,政府补贴对创新数量的影响随知识产权保护力度的加大,呈现出促进作用先增强后减弱的趋势,而政府补贴对创新质量的影响则随知识产权保护力度的加大,呈现出先抑制后促进的U型非线性规律,只有当知识产权保护力度跨越一定门槛水平时,才能有效释放政府补贴的创新质量提升效应。因此,在不断完善的知识产权保护制度下,政府补贴能够有效促进技术创新由“量”到“质”转变。

Scientific and technological innovation is the first driving force for economic development of China.Compared with China's innovation quantity,its innovation quality is unsatisfactory.In order to realize the high-quality transformation of technological innovation,it is imperative to scientifically and reasonably design the intellectual property protection system,and promote the effective release of innovation incentive effect of government subsidies.Most of the existing literature focuses on the linear relationship between government subsidies and the quantity and quality of innovation,and the conclusions are still controversial,which implies that there may be a nonlinear relationship and provides ideas for the exploration of the effective path of government subsidies to realize innovation transformation from quantitative to qualitative.However the existing literature on the non-linear relationship between government subsidies and innovation quantity is rare,and few studies pay attention to the innovation effect of government subsidies with consideration of intellectual property protection.Therefore this study investigates the innovation incentive effect of government subsidies from the perspective of intellectual property protection,and tries to answer the following questions.What is the innovation incentive effect of government subsidies on Chinese government subsidies in recent years?What are the differences and patterns of the impact of government subsidies on the quantity and quality of innovation,especially under different levels of intellectual property protection?Drawing on the balanced panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2009 to 2020,this study empirically examines the threshold effect of intellectual property protection on government subsidies for innovation spillover dividends by using non-dynamic panel threshold regression technology.It is found that during the study period,the Chinese government subsidy policy not only has promoted the quantity of technological innovation,but also helped to achieve a qualitative leap.However,the regional heterogeneity analysis shows that the government subsidies in the eastern and central regions have realized the qualitative change of innovation,while there is a significant inhibition in the western region.Further research finds that the innovation incentive effect of government subsidies has a dual threshold effect based on intellectual property protection,that is,the impact of government subsidies on the quantity and quality of innovation varies with the intensity of intellectual property protection.Among them,the impact of government subsidies on the number of innovation becomes stronger with the increase of intellectual property protection,showing a trend of first enhancing and then weakening.With the improvement of intellectual property protection,the impact of government subsidies on innovation quality shows a U-shaped nonlinear law of first inhibition and then promotion.Only when the intellectual property protection exceeds a certain threshold level,can the effect of government subsidies on innovation quality improvement be effectively released.It can be seen that with the reinforcement of intellectual property protection,government subsidies have gradually realized the transformation of China's technological innovation from quantity to quality.Further,by examining the relationship between government subsidies and innovation quality in various regions over the years based on the distribution change of intellectual property protection threshold,it is found that most provinces and cities in China have realized threshold jumps.Among them,the provinces and cities in the eastern and central regions are now mainly concentrated between the two thresholds(0.0025IPP0.0093)and beyond the second threshold(IPP0.0093),showing the promotion effect of government subsidies on innovation quality as a whole.Most of the western region is still concentrated in the first two intervals(IPP0.0025 and 0.0025IPP0.0093),namely the left side of the U-shaped curve,showing the inhibitory effect of government subsidies on innovation quality.The above conclusions are to drawn to suggest that the central and local governments should further improve the government subsidy policy,improve China's intellectual property protection system to achieve high-quality innovation incentives of government subsidies and give full consideration to the spatial differences of policy effect in policy formulation and implementation.