政府补助在激励企业“卡脖子”技术创新中能否提供助力——以企业参与内循环程度为调节变量

Can Government Subsidies Assist in Incentivizing Enterprises to Make Innovation in Technological "Bottleneck" Breakthroughs? The Degree of Enterprise Participation in Domestic Circulation as a Moderating Variable

如何推动“卡脖子”技术企业创新,是近年来我国面临的重要战略问题。尝试引入锦标赛理论解释政府补助的激励机理,基于2011—2020年我国半导体及芯片行业上市企业数据,结合近年国家提出以内循环为主的新发展战略,以企业参与内循环程度为调节变量,实证研究政府补助对“卡脖子”技术企业创新产出的激励作用。结果表明,政府补助与“卡脖子”技术企业创新产出间具有倒U型关系,企业参与内循环程度在政府补助与“卡脖子”技术企业创新产出的倒U型关系中起调节作用。研究结论可为“卡脖子”技术企业在新发展格局下开展高质量创新提供参考。

Since 2018,the technology bottlenecks represented by semiconductors and chips have attracted widespread attention in China.In order to solve the problems and meet the requirements of high-quality development,China needs to make technological breakthroughs as quickly as possible,increase government support,and strengthen the innovation ability of enterprises.Therefore,it is an important strategic issue of how to promote the enterprise innovation of industries with technology bottlenecks in China in recent years.In addition,solving these problems is also one of the incentives proposed by the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee for the new development pattern of"taking the domestic circulation as the main body".Although existing studies have provided some theoretical basis,it is a the relatively new concept,and there are few studies on government subsidies and enterprise innovation in the field of technology bottlenecks,and few kinds of research can be carried out at the micro level of enterprises on the new development pattern.Since government subsidies not only have“crowding-in”and“crowding-out”effects on enterprise innovation,but also may vary according to the characteristics of countries and specific industries,the conclusions of existing studies on the effect of government subsidies on enterprise innovation are still controversial.Therefore,this paper tries to explain the incentive mechanism of government subsidies by introducing the tournament theory.Employing the data of listed enterprises in the semiconductor and chip industry which represent China's technology bottlenecks from 2011 to 2020,this paper combines with the new development strategy of domestic circulation put forward by the government in recent years,and constructs the moderating variable of the enterprise participation degree in domestic circulation.Through empirical analysis,it studies the incentive effects of government subsidies on innovation output of enterprises facing serious technology bottlenecks and the importance of the active participation of relevant enterprises in domestic circulation in this process as well.The results show that as a vital method for enterprises to receive money from the government,there is an inverted U-shaped relationship between government subsidies and the innovation output of enterprises with technology bottlenecks,namely as the government subsidies are getting higher,the innovation of the enterprise output motivated by the subsidies increases first and then diminishes until the perverse incentives for output decreases,and high-quality innovation is more difficult to achieve than the overall innovation.This reflects that although subsidies are important measures for the government to promote innovation,more subsidies are not always the better.For the innovative problems that are difficult to overcome in the industry with technology bottlenecks,only relying on large government subsidies may not generate good incentives for high-quality innovation results,and the technology bottlenecks still exist.Besides,on the basis of the domestic circulation which aims to actively expand domestic demand and improve the domestic market under the new development pattern,the degree of participation in the domestic circulation can moderate the inverted U-shaped relationship between government subsidies and the innovation output of enterprises,namely as being able to further enhance the benefits of government subsidies and ease the inverted U-shaped relationship.This shows that the enterprises with technology bottlenecks may achieve innovation breakthroughs through the domestic market,which is also in line with the actual needs of China and the relevant national policy guidance.In addition,some robustness tests are used to check the robustness of the conclusions.Different from the macro or policy research under the"new development pattern",this study focuses on the micro level and makes a detailed analysis with focus on the enterprises with technology bottlenecks represented by semiconductors and chips.Furthermore given the quality of innovation,both high-quality innovation and overall innovation output of these enterprises are analyzed;in addition to the traditional theory,the tournament theory is introduced to explain the relationship between government subsidies and innovation of enterprises.Finally,the moderating variable of the degree of participation in domestic circulation is introduced and constructed,which expands the potential mechanisms of government subsidies and innovation behavior.