政策不确定性对企业创新绩效的影响——研发要素区际流动的中介作用

自中国经济发展进入新常态以来，频繁的政策实验使得政策不确定性成为企业创新决策过程中不可忽视的因素，企业在不确定性政策环境中的行为选择及内在机理有待进一步检验。基于政策不确定性概念，检验不同类型政策不确定性对企业创新绩效的影响，并从人才和资本两个维度分析研发要素流动的中介作用。结果发现：总体来看，政策不确定性不利于企业创新绩效提升与研发要素流动。具体地，供给层政策不确定性对企业创新绩效和研发要素流动具有负向影响，需求层政策不确定性对其具有正向影响，环境层政策不确定对其无显著影响。人才、资本等研发要素流动在政策不确定性与企业创新绩效间发挥部分中介效应。进一步分析发现，供给层政策不确定性通过抑制人才、资金等研发要素流动负向影响企业创新绩效，需求层和环境层政策不确定性通过促进人才、资金等研发要素流动正向影响企业创新绩效。

How does Policy Uncertainty Affect Enterprise's Innovation Performance: An Analysis of Mediating Role of Interregional R&D Factor Flow

Enterprises are rational economic subjects, and their profit-seeking nature of enterprises will make the uncertain policy environment either beneficial or detrimental to enterprise innovation. Although many scholars point out that the reasons for the divergence of benefits and drawbacks may lie in enterprise heterogeneity or differences in enterprise investment approaches, and argue that the rational use of market uncertainty caused by policy uncertainty to boost enterprise innovation development is the optimal choice in reform, most research findings still end up helplessly pointing to the need for government to maintain policy stability, and fail to provide concrete guidance on how governments can apply the potential advantages of policy uncertainty. An important reason for this is the disconnect between real-world needs and academic research findings. The heterogeneity of policy goals and measures in reality will inevitably lead to diverse policy uncertainties, while academics currently still take a holistic view of the relationship between policy uncertainty and firm innovation performance, which ultimately leads to a gap between practice and theory. As policy uncertainty induced by relevant policy adjustments in China in recent years has generally improved firm innovation, and an in-depth analysis of which type of policy uncertainty has played a positive role would be helpful to strengthen this incentive effect and provide comprehensive suggestions for policy system construction.#br#Due to the limitations of the research perspective, previous studies implied that the R&D factors of enterprises only came from local government agencies or financial institutions such as banks, and mostly focused on the role of intra-regional R&D factor inputs in the policy uncertainty and enterprise innovation performance. In fact, unlike the concept of regional R&D factor input as stock, the uneven regional spatial development pattern of information technology development overlays the inter-regional flow of R&D factors as a new driving force for enterprise innovation development, and differs significantly from the regional stock of R&D factors in innovation effect. In this context, if we still analyze how intra-regional R&D factors influence firms' innovation decisions in an uncertain policy environment from a static perspective and ignore the inter-regional interactions, we will inevitably be out of touch with the reality of firms' innovation practices.#br#The data in this study is from 2007-2019. Among them, all the data related to enterprises come from China Science and Technology Statistical Yearbook and China High Technology Industry Statistical Yearbook. To ensure the reliability of the regression results, this paper deflates all the nominal value data to obtain the actual value. At the same time, all data, except for the flow of R&D factors, are logarithmically processed.#br#The findings of the study are as follows :(1) in general, policy uncertainty is detrimental to firm innovation performance and R&D factor flow, specifically, policy uncertainty at the supply level has a negative effect on firm innovation performance and R&D factor flow, while the opposite is true for policy uncertainty at the demand and environment levels; (2) R&D factor flow such as talent and capital both play a partial mediating effect between policy uncertainty and firm innovation performance; (3) it's found that policy uncertainty at the supply level negatively affects firms' innovation performance by inhibiting the flow of R&D factors such as talent and capital, while policy uncertainty at the demand and environment levels positively affects firms' innovation performance by promoting the flow of R&D factors such as talent and capital.#br#This paper takes a government perspective and analyzes the impact of different types of policy uncertainty on firm innovation performance. In addition, instead of taking a static perspective to analyze the role of regional R&D factor, this paper focuses on the mediating role of inter-regional R&D factor flow with the assumption of spatial correlation to provide a new perspective and new ideas on the mechanism of policy uncertainty and provide a theoretical basis for the rational use of R&D factors by enterprises.#br#