国家审计能否改善政府研发补贴的效果?——基于审计管理体制改革的实证研究

Can national audit improve the effectiveness of government R&D subsidies?——An empirical study based on the reform of the audit management system

国家审计为解决研发补贴低效率和提高国家财产安全提供了一种解决途径。本文以2012-2019年省以下地方国有A股上市公司为研究对象,利用2015年发生的审计管理体制改革为准自然实验,采用双重差分法检验审计管理体制改革对地方国有企业研发补贴效率的影响。实证结果表明:第一,政府对地方国有企业的研发补贴从总体上并没有显著增加企业的研发投入和研发产出;第二,审计管理体制改革后研发补贴显著提高了地方国有企业的研发投入和企业的专利申请数量,表明审计管理体制改革带来的审计独立性增强改善了政府对企业研发补贴的效率;第三,从渠道来看,国家审计通过增加对地方国企的外部监督、增强对地方国企高管的认证激励以及减少政府对地方国企的过度补贴等渠道改善研发补贴的效果。本文的研究对于推动审计独立性改革、提高研发补贴效率和实现国有企业高质量发展具有重要的政策含义。

In order to deal with Market failure and encourage enterprise innovation,governments of all countries generally adopt the way of subsidizing enterprise R&D activities to encourage enterprises to carry out R&D innovation activities.However,R&D subsidies often fail to achieve the expected policy effect of increasing enterprise R&D investment and output,and may even squeeze out private R&D expenditures.How to improve the efficiency of government R&D subsidies for enterprises and motivate them to engage in R&D and innovation activities?National auditing may provide a way to solve the above problems.From the perspective of government subsidy audit,national audit can not only examine whether the content of financial subsidies issued by the government meets the subsidy scope specified by the state,whether the subsidy objects and standards are approved and implemented according to the prescribed procedures,but also examine the economic and social benefits generated by enterprises using financial subsidy funds,and what role they play in promoting production,operation,and sustainable development of enterprises.How-ever,the current local audit system is under the dual leadership of higher-level audit institutions and local governments,which makes it difficult for local audit institutions to maintain independence in many aspects.Under the dual leadership system,the local audit sys-tem lacks the necessary independence in supervising the efficiency of local state-owned enterprise financial subsidy funds,as well as the appropriateness and compliance of obtaining subsidies.Can the implementation of the audit management system reform ultimately be implemented in place,thereby effectively improving the efficiency of enterprise research and development subsidies?If it can be im-proved,through which channels has the reform of the audit management system improved the efficiency of enterprise research and de-velopment subsidies?This paper has important policy implications for promoting audit independence reform,improving the efficiency of research and development subsidies,and achieving high-quality development of state-owned enterprises.Referring to existing literature,this paper proposes four hypotheses based on relevant theories:Hypothesis 1,National auditing can improve the effectiveness of research and development subsidies;Hypothesis 2,National auditing improves the effectiveness of re-search and development subsidies by increasing external supervision of state-owned enterprises;Hypothesis 3,National auditing im-proves the effectiveness of research and development subsidies by enhancing certification incentives for state-owned enterprise execu-tives;Hypothesis 4,National auditing improves the effectiveness of research and development subsidies by reducing excessive subsidies to state-owned enterprises.To verify the above hypothesis,we select state-owned A-share listed companies below the provincial level as the research ob-ject,excluding state-owned enterprises,state-owned listed companies directly controlled by provincial governments,and other own-ership enterprises.The company's R&D expenditure data is obtained from the"Company Patents and R&D Innovation"sub database of the China Economic and Financial Research Database(CSMAR),and patent data is obtained from the"Patents of Listed Companies and Subsidiaries"sub database,Obtain subsidy data obtained by enterprises from the"Notes to Financial Statements"sub database for empirical analysis.The empirical results indicate that:firstly,the governments R&D subsidies to local state-owned enterprises have not significantly increased their R&D investment and output overall;Secondly,after the reform of the audit management system,R&D subsidies significantly increased the R&D investment of local state-owned enterprises and the number of patent applications,indica-ting that the enhanced audit independence brought by the reform of the audit management system has improved the efficiency of govern-ment R&D subsidies for enterprises;Thirdly,from the perspective of channels,national auditing improves the effectiveness of research and development subsidies by increasing external supervision of local state-owned enterprises,enhancing certification incentives for local state-owned enterprise executives,and reducing excessive government subsidies for local state-owned enterprises.This paper has important policy implications for promoting audit independence reform,improving the efficiency of research and de-velopment subsidies,and achieving high-quality development of state-owned enterprises.