数字经济与企业创新迎合行为:信息缓解政策扭曲效应的实证研究

Digital Economy and Firms’Innovation Catering Behavior:An Empirical Study on Information Alleviating the Distortion Effects of Policies

党的二十大报告指出,坚持创新在我国现代化建设全局中的核心地位,优化配置创新资源,深化科技体制改革,提升国家创新体系整体效能。政府创新激励政策为企业研发创新注入新的活力,但也导致了企业凭借信息优势以创新迎合行为反制政策初衷的创新困境。本文基于信息不对称理论,实证考察了数字经济对企业创新迎合行为的影响、情境效应、作用机制和经济后果。研究发现,地区数字经济发展能够抑制该地区企业创新迎合行为,这种抑制作用主要来自数字产业相关从业人员的增加。对于异质性分析,数字经济对企业创新迎合行为的抑制作用在非国有企业、中小规模企业、处于低行业竞争环境中的企业、处于低营商环境中的企业更显著。对于机制分析,数字经济能够通过降低企业与外界间的信息不对称程度,抑制企业创新迎合行为。对于经济后果,数字经济既能直接影响企业创新产出,也能在降低企业创新迎合行为的同时,间接改善由此产生的创新产出下降问题。本文丰富了数字经济打破“信息孤岛”的研究成果,不仅为当前科创实践中存在的“高投入、强数量、弱质量、低效率”现象提供了可能的解决路径,而且为抑制企业创新迎合行为以及优化高新技术企业认定政策提供了新的视角与微观依据。

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that“innovation is the core element in the overall situation of China’s modernization,and we should insist on optimizing the allocation of innovation resources,deepening the reform of the science and technology system,and enhancing the overall effectiveness of the national innovation system.”On the way to becoming an innovation powerhouse,the government’s innovation incentive policies have not only injected new vitality and motivation into firms’R&D and innovation but also led to the innovation challenge of firms using information advantages to adopt innovative catering behavior,counteracting the original intention of policies.In recent years,China’s digital economy has achieved rapid growth with the rise of the technological revolution and the guidance of national policies and served as an important driving force for promoting high-quality economic development.However,whether the digital economy can inhibit firms’innovation catering behavior remains unanswered,and it is of great significance for understanding the interaction between government and firms against the background of government innovation incentive policies in the digital economy era.For a long time,China has attached great importance to the development of high-tech firms and put forward clear requirements for their recognition conditions.Therefore,considering the reform of high-tech firms’recognition conditions in 2008,this study selects Chinese listed high-tech firms from 2008 to 2020 as the sample.Based on the information asymmetry theory,this study explores the direct effects,contextual effects,mechanisms,and economic effects of the digital economy on firms’innovation catering behavior.The research results reveal that the development of the regional digital economy can inhibit the innovation catering behavior of local firms,and this inhibiting effect is mainly attributed to the increase in the number of employees in the digital industry.The heterogeneity analysis reveals that the inhibiting effect of the digital economy on innovation catering behavior is stronger for non-state firms,small and medium-sized firms,firms in a low competition environment,and firms in a low marketization environment.The mechanism test indicates that the inhibiting effect of the digital economy on innovation catering behavior is achieved by reducing information asymmetry between firms and the market.For the economic impacts,the digital economy not only directly affects firms’innovation output but also indirectly improves their innovation output by reducing their innovation catering behavior.The contributions of this study lie in four aspects.First,regarding the research perspective,this study focuses on the strategic interaction between government policies and firms’behavior and combines the digital economy with firms’innovation catering behavior to build a linkage mechanism between the digital economy development and industrial policy implementation.It responds to the call in recent studies for more investigation into“how to ensure that the implementation of government innovation incentives does not counteract the original intentions of policies.”Second,there are few empirical studies on the mediating mechanism of information asymmetry in the existing literature.Through large sample data,this study further supports the application of information asymmetry theory in digital economy research,enriching the research results of the digital economy to break the“information silo”phenomenon.Third,this study empirically examines the direct and indirect effects of the digital economy on firms’innovation output and provides theoretical evidence for the economic impacts of the digital economy inhibiting firms’innovation catering behavior.Finally,for the practical significance,this study not only provides a possible explanation and a solution for the issues of“high input,high quantity,weak quality and low efficiency”of current scientific and technological innovation practice but also provides a new perspective and micro-level evidence for reducing firms’innovation catering behavior and improving the policy of identifying high-tech firms.