持续资助的创新激励效应:多多益善还是过犹不及

Is More Always Better?The Innovation Incentive Effect of Sustained Subsidies

持续的研发资助既可能产生更高的创新激励效应,也可能加剧委托代理问题,需要政策制定者面临权衡取舍。本文在控制单次资助强度的基础上,从连续性和积累性两个维度探究持续研发资助对企业创新活动全过程的影响,测算持续资助的最优比例,并考察其创新质量效应和动态效应。采用2008-2017年上海市科技企业调查数据,并使用倾向得分匹配构造可比样本,实证结果表明:(1)持续资助的创新激励效应不仅作用于创新规模,还有助于提升创新质量。在连续时期内施加研发资助及各期资助效果的积累均显著促进私人R&D投资并推动专利申请与授权,且对发明专利的促进作用更为明显。(2)持续资助的最优比例约为9.94%,低于单次资助的最优比例和样本企业的实际资助比例。动态效应结果表明,持续资助的创新质量提升效应随着资助年限的延长而增强,创新规模提升效应则先增强后减弱。(3)对经济效应的进一步分析表明,持续资助的连续状态和积累效果均可通过研发规模和创新质量两条中介路径对企业全要素生产率产生正向影响,但当前研发规模路径的中介效果远高于创新质量路径。本文研究表明,多期研发资助间存在时间互补性,从而支持了对部分企业进行持续资助的政策实践。

Governments globally commonly resort to providing external R&D subsidies to counteract this innovation deficit.However,a persistent trade-off prevails in government innovation funding practices:whether to consistently fund a few firms to swiftly foster a cohort of industry leaders under budget constraints or to broaden funding scope for elevating average technological levels.Resolving this quandary hinges on a pivotal question:Does sustained subsidy outperform single subsidies in propelling firm innovation and productivity?Innovation activities constitute a systematic process,wherein sustained subsidies exert a positive impact on firms’R&D activities that surpasses the simple sum of multiple one-time subsidies.The continuous nature of sustained subsidies enables firms to build expectations on a steady external cash flow,guiding them to engage in high-level innovation activities and mitigating principal-agent risks through repeated game playing.Moreover,the enhancement of innovation capabilities through sustained subsidies accumulates over the years,with complementary effects between the past and current subsidy impacts.In this paper,we summarize the aforementioned effects as the continuity and cumulative impact of sustained subsidies.However,continuity and cumulative effects are not always positive;sustained subsidies may also reinforce negative effects of inefficient allocation,leading to stronger crowding-out effects.Therefore,empirical analysis is necessary to elucidate the comprehensive impact of sustained subsidies on firms’innovation activities.This paper employs data from the Shanghai Science and Technology Commission’s Enterprise Innovation Survey to scrutinize whether sustained subsidies yield supplementary impacts on innovation and ascertain the optimal intensity of such subsidies.The empirical approach involves constructing a panel data model,and we employ propensity score matching approach to build a counterfactual sample to address potential selection biases.Explanatory variables encompass R&D investment,patent application and authorization counts.The continuity(a binary variable indicating whether firms receive R&D subsidies for consecutive years)and accumulation(cumulative periods of sustained subsidies)variables serve as explanatory variables.We control for R&D subsidy intensity,and calculates the optimal intensity of sustained subsidies by incorporating a quadratic term.The study further explores the long-term dynamic effects and whether sustained subsidies bolster total factor productivity(TFP).The latter is computed via the Solow residual approachs,followed by a mediating effects model to scrutinize whether sustained subsidies heighten TFP by expanding R&D and refining innovation quality.Rigorous robustness tests reinforce the reliability of the results.Empirical findings reveal that:(1)Sustained subsidies'innovation incentive effect not only influences innovation scale but also elevates innovation quality.Both continuity and accumulation feature of sustained subsidies stimulate private R&D investment,foster patent applications and grants.This effect is more pronounced for invention patents compared to non-inventions.(2)The optimal intensity of sustained subsidies approximates 9.94%,lower than that of a one-time subsidy.As funding duration elongates,the innovation quality improvement effect of sustained subsidies gains strength,whereas the innovation scale improvement effect initially rises,then wanes,the turn being between 2 and 3 periods.Considering that in practice,the average intensity of R&D subsidies is much higher than 9.94%,and the average funding period is lower than 2 periods,these findings advocate reducing funding intensity and extending funding duration for improved R&D efficacy.(3)Further economic analysis indicates that both continuous state and cumulative effects of sustained subsidies positively influence TFP through R&D scale and innovation quality,though the intermediary effect of the R&D scale channel far surpasses that of the innovation quality channel.Overall,this study concludes that time complementarity exists among multiple R&D grants,underscoring the policy wisdom of providing sustained subsidies to enterprises.