政府支出规模对创新的影响——促进抑或阻碍

The Impact of Government Expenditure Size on Innovation in China:Promoting or Hindering?

自中国经济步入“新常态”以来,创新已然成为中国未来经济可持续发展的重要动力。本文首先在理论层面上分析了政府支出对创新的正向激励效应和负向挤出效应,然后基于2007—2017年中国269个地级市的面板数据,实证检验了中国政府支出规模的创新效应,意在探索有利于促进创新的政府支出规模和结构。实证结果表明,从整体上看,中国当前的政府支出规模对创新具有显著的正向促进作用,并且这一作用主要是由政府支出中的科学技术支出和福利性支出对创新活动的正向激励效应所驱动。与此同时,政府支出规模对创新的影响呈现出明显的地区差异和创新质量差异:在人均科学技术支出和人均福利性支出更多的东部与中部地区,政府支出规模的正向激励效应表现得更为显著;科学技术支出会同时促进高质量和低质量的创新活动,而福利性支出只促进低质量的创新活动。

Since the Chinese economy enters the period of new normal,innovation has become the key driving force for China?s sustainable economic development.This paper first analyzes the positive incentive effect and negative crowding-out effect of government expenditure on innovation theoretically,and then empirically examines the impact of government expenditure size on innovation based on a panel dataset of 269 prefecture-level cities for the period of 2007 to 2017,aiming to uncover the beneficial level and structure of government expenditure size that are conductive to innovation.Our estimation results suggest that overall,the existing government expenditure size has significantly promoted innovation activities in China,which,in turn,is driven by the expenditure on science and technology area and welfare area.Moreover,the effect is found to be heterogeneous across regions and innovation quality levels.Particularly,we show that the effect is much salient in eastern and central regions,where per capita science and technology expenditure and per capita welfare expenditure are higher than that in western regions.We also find science and technology expenditure to promote innovation activities at all levels of quality,while welfare expenditure only promotes low-quality innovation activities..