摘要
理论上是否需要由政府来制定产业政策仍存在争议。本文基于2008年开始实施的《高新技术企业认定管理办法》这一具体的产业政策,研究产业政策实施中的激励效应与迎合效应。研究发现,公司获得高新技术企业认定后,其创新投入以及创新产出的数量和质量均显著提升,但通过虚增研发投入而获得高新技术企业认定的公司,其创新投入以及创新产出的数量和质量均提升较少。这表明产业政策既可能会激励公司创新,也可能导致公司仅仅为表面迎合政策要求,而无意于真正从事创新。机制分析结果还发现,通过高新技术企业认定的企业可以获得更多的税收优惠和政府补助,也会聘请更多高学历的员工,但产业政策所带来的减税优惠、政府补助以及人才聚集效应只会促进真正的高新技术企业增加创新,而对于“伪高新技术企业”,产业政策的创新激励作用显著减弱。本文研究结论不仅协调了“产业政策之争”双方所持的不同理论观点,也为政府如何实施产业政策提供了理论参考。
R&D plays a crucial role in economic growth.However,whether the government should formulate industrial policies to stimulate R&D is still a highly controversial topic.First,R&D is associated with a strong externality(i.e.the R&D output of an enterprise often spills over into other companies in the same industry,as well as in other industries).Companies often become reluctant to increase R&D investment because of externality(Arrow,1962).In addition,the uncertainties associated with R&D are so high that banks are unwilling to provide loans for high-risk firms.Thus,the government needs to develop industrial policies to provide firms with incentives to increase R&D investment to overcome market dysfunction.Second,the Austrian School believes that the government is not smarter than the market because of cognitive limitations and information asymmetry.The government cannot accurately identify which industries need to be guided by industrial policies,nor can it differentiate pseudo-innovators from authentic innovators without any cost.In other words,the government may also fail.This paper takes advantage of the specific industry policy of China's“Regulation on the Identification of High-tech Enterprises”as the empirical setting to study the economic consequences of industrial policy implementation to provide micro-level evidence for the dispute on industrial policy.Tax incentives and government subsidies are the main policy tools used to compensate for R&D externalities and stimulate R&D investment.First,lowering the corporate income tax rate enables enterprises to better internalize the economic benefits of R&D,and providing certain subsidies reduces the marginal cost of R&D failures.Both tools encourage enterprises to increase R&D investment.Moreover,incentives such as tax cuts and subsidies can ease the financial constraints caused by a company's innovation and enable high-skilled labor to cluster in high-tech enterprises.Second,to obtain preferential policies,enterprises may choose to release“false innovation signals”.The false signals may deceive policy makers because the information screening by policy makers is costly.This will impair the incentive effect of the industrial policy(An et al.,2009).Furthermore,government officials create rent-seeking problems when they allocate scarce resources,which also mitigates the effectiveness of industrial policies.Based on the above arguments,we posit that there may be both incentive effects and catering effects.We utilize the identification of high-tech listed enterprises as the exogenous event and adopt a difference-in-differences and propensity score matching empirical design to show that authentic high-tech enterprises increase their R&D investment,number of patent applications,and patent application quality,while pseudo-high-tech enterprises reduce their R&D investment,patent application quantity,and patent application quality.Further,authentic high-tech enterprises take advantage of the benefits of industry policy,such as tax cuts,government subsidies,and clustering of high-skilled labor to improve corporate innovation,while pseudo-high-tech enterprises rarely use preferential policies to engage in innovative activities.This paper adds empirical evidence to the dispute on industrial policy.One school of thought believes that the market may fail and emphasizes the value of a“promising government”,while the other school thinks that the government may fail and supports the“invisible hand”theory.Our conclusion shows that industrial policy can have both positive and negative effects,because the relationship between the government and the market in the real world is complicated.Market dysfunction and government failure may co-exist.The“invisible hand”and“promising government”theories may work well together.Therefore,we propose that future research should shift the focus of debate from whether the government should introduce industrial policy to how the government should implement industrial policy.
作者
杨国超
芮萌
YANG Guochao;RUI Men(School of Accounting&Institute of Income Distribution and Public Finance,Zhongnan University of Economics and Law;China Europe International Business School)
出处
《经济研究》
CSSCI
北大核心
2020年第9期174-191,共18页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家自然科学基金(71702192)
高等学校学科创新引智计划(B20084)
中南财经政法大学中央高校基本科研业务费专项资金(2722020JCT023)
后期资助项目(2722020YJ030)的支持。
关键词
产业政策
高新技术企业
税收优惠
研发创新
熵平衡法
Industrial Policy
High-tech Enterprise
Tax Incentive
R&D
Entropy Balancing Method
