“抱团取暖”可以应对“寒冬”吗? 贸易政策不确定性与企业协同创新 ——来自中美贸易摩擦的经验证据

Can“banding together for warmth”cope with the“cold winter”?Trade policy uncertainty and firm’s collaborative innovation:empirical evidence from the US-China trade friction

基于2018年美国政府发起的对华贸易战,运用广义双重差分模型考察贸易政策不确定性对企业协同创新的影响及其作用渠道与经济后果。研究发现:贸易政策不确定性通过加剧融资约束、降低风险承担能力的作用渠道驱动中国企业选择“抱团取暖”,即以“协同创新”的方式谋求技术突破和研发攻关以抵御外部风险。调节效应检验结果发现:当上市公司属于高新技术企业时,贸易政策不确定性对协同创新的驱动效应更为显著;数字化转型为企业间创新要素的聚拢和流动提供了便利,较高的知识产权保护力度降低了企业协同创新中知识被模仿和窃取的风险,因此两者均能够强化贸易政策不确定性对企业协同创新的驱动作用。进一步区分协同创新的主体后发现:当企业面临贸易政策不确定性时,更倾向于选择与供应链上下游企业、高校及科研机构进行协同创新。并且,贸易政策不确定性在促使企业选择协同创新后可显著提升企业未来一期、二期、三期的全要素生产率,从而证实“抱团取暖”的协同创新方式确实能够帮助企业安稳度过“寒冬”。本文丰富了协同创新的驱动机制研究,也为企业在急剧变化的外部贸易环境中以“抱团”方式寻求理性出路提供了参考与借鉴。

Based on the trade war launched by the US government against China in 2018,this paper examines the impact of trade policy uncertainty on enterprises’collaborative innovation and its mechanisms and economic consequences using a generalized double difference model,and finds that trade policy uncertainty drives Chinese enterprises to choose“banding together for warmth”through the mechanisms of increasing financing constraints and reducing risk-taking capacity.The study finds that trade policy uncertainty drives Chinese firms to seek technological breakthroughs and research and development(R&D)to protect themselves from external risks by increasing financing constraints and reducing risk-taking capacity.The heterogeneity test finds that the driving effect of trade policy uncertainty on collaborative innovation is more significant when listed companies are high-tech enterprises.Digital transformation facilitates the clustering and flow of innovation factors among firms,and higher intellectual property protection reduces the risk of imitation and theft of knowledge in collaborative innovation,so both can strengthen the driving effect of trade policy uncertainty on collaborative innovation.Further differentiation of the subjects of collaborative innovation reveals that when firms face trade policy uncertainty,they tend to choose to collaborate with upstream and downstream enterprises,universities and research institutes.Moreover,the uncertainty of trade policy can significantly increase the total factor productivity of enterprises in the first,second and third phases of the supply chain,thus confirming that the“collaborative innovation approach”can help enterprises to survive the“cold winter”.This paper enriches the research on the driving mechanism of collaborative innovation,and also provides a reference for enterprises to seek a rational way out of the rapidly changing external trade environment by“banding together”.