缓解融资约束必然促进企业创新吗?来自信贷扩张准实验的证据

Does financial constraints alleviation effectively promote firm innovation?Evidence from a quasi-experiment on credit expansion

融资约束被广泛视为制约企业创新的关键因素,但缓解融资约束是否一定能促进企业创新却有待探讨.有鉴于中国金融体系以银行信贷为主体,本文主要考察信贷扩张能否显著促进企业创新并分析其机制.利用2015年“取消存款利率上限”政策的实施作为信贷扩张的外生冲击,本文构建双重差分模型进行实证检验,分析显示政策实施带来的银行存款竞争效应使得民营企业相对于非民营企业获得的贷款规模显著增加,然而企业在获得额外信贷资源后其创新投入和产出无显著变化.上述结果在高新技术企业与战略新兴企业等具有较大创新需求的样本中保持不变,对各地知识产权保护程度也不敏感,并且与企业获得的贷款期限结构无关.进一步分析发现,企业在信贷扩张后配置了更多金融资产,特别是短期金融资产,说明创新主观意愿不足更可能是信贷扩张并未带来企业创新增加的原因.本文研究揭示促进企业创新不能仅仅依赖于信贷扩张,而应结合创新驱动战略,改善创新环境并减少企业短视行为,通过提升创新相对回报来促进企业乐于创新.

The constraints of financing are widely regarded as a key factor limiting firms'innovation.However,whether easing these constraints always promotes innovation is still a matter of debate.Given that the Chinese financial system relies primarily on bank credit,this paper mainly examines whether credit expansion can significantly promote firms'innovation and analyzes its mechanism.Using the implementation of the"removal of the deposit interest rate limit"policy as an exogenous shock of credit expansion,this paper constructs a difference-in-differences(DID)model for empirical testing.The analysis shows that the bank deposit competition effect brought by the policy implementation significantly increases the loan size obtained by private enterprises relative to non-private enterprises.However,there is no significant change in innovation input and output by enterprises after obtaining additional credit resources.The results remain unchanged in samples with greater innovation demand,such as high-tech enterprises and emerging strategic enterprises,and are insensitive to the degree of intellectual property protection in different regions and the loan term structure obtained by enterprises.Further analysis find that enterprises allocate more financial assets,especially short-term financial assets,after credit expansion,indicating that a lack of subjective willingness for innovation is more likely to be the reason why credit expansion does not bring about new firms'innovation.This article reveals that promoting innovation cannot rely solely on credit expansion,but should be combined with innovation-driven strategies,improved innovation environment,and reduced short-sighted behavior of enterprises to promote innovation by enhancing relative returns on innovation.