中国金融扩张下的本土企业创新效应——基于倒U型关系的一个解释

2005年后,我国金融发展呈现出相对持续扩张和地区异质性两个核心特征,基于此,本文针对2005-2016年中国各省份地区金融业增加值占GDP比重持续扩张对本土企业创新活动的影响效应进行实证研究发现:金融业增加值占GDP比重持续扩张与本土企业创新投入呈稳定的倒U型关系,从而验证了我国各省份地区金融扩张对地区内微观企业创新活动造成两面性影响效应这一基本事实。具体而言,其抑制效应主要作用于31.55%的本土企业、尤其体现在45.98%的私人所有性质企业创新活动方面。从企业内源和外源创新活动的细分角度看,我国各省份地区的金融扩张对31.38%的本土企业以及55.66%的私人所有性质企业的内源创新活动产生了显著抑制效应。而对企业外源创新活动所产生的抑制作用,则主要体现在独立法人和私人所有性质为主的民营企业方面。本文的一系列经验发现,为协调实现中国金融业增加值占GDP比重合理扩张与促进本土企业自主创新能力提升的战略目标,提供了独特的经验证据,可为进一步推进我国金融体制改革提供有益参考。

Financial Expansion and Chinese Local Enterprises Innovation:An Inverted U-shaped Relationship

In the current phase of China's economic development, scholars and policy makers are becoming increasingly concerned about the financial capital that is now either “shifting from the real economy to the virtual economy” or self-circulating in the financial system. As a matter of fact, this is part of a trend in which large amounts of financial capital, even the operating funds of the real economy, are entering the virtual economy through various channels.The most objective method of judging the role of these phenomena in the rapid expansion of the financial value added component of China's GDP is to test whether the expansion of China's financial sector or the extension of its financial industry chain to the shadow banking system have either effectively matched or supported local enterprises' ability to independently innovate or have instead diverted resources from the sustainable development of the real economy, which is dominated by the manufacturing industry. While the continuous expansion of financial value added in GDP is a periodic condition in the economic development of developing countries like China, it can have both positive or negative implications. On the one hand, it is an expected component of economic development, but on the other hand, it may indicate the presence of deep-seated risk factors that may slow financial development and the transformation of the financial structure.Accordingly, using detailed micro data on innovation in enterprises, this study summarizes the characteristics of the rapid expansion of China's financial value added in GDP. Then, by taking advantage of the policy impacts of the Chinese government's deregulation of banking business in 2005, and referring to Stevenson (2010) and Ahern and Dittmar (2012), this study constructs a variety of unique instrumental variables and uses them to empirically explore the impact of financial expansion on the innovation activities of local enterprises in China and the mechanism that drives this process. We find that the relationship between the continuous expansion of the added value of GDP in the financial industry and the innovation investment of local enterprises has a stable inverted U-shaped, which verifies the basic fact that the financial expansion of China's provinces and regions has a dual effect on the innovation activities of micro enterprises. The results show that reasonable financial expansion is conducive to the innovation activities of China's local enterprises, but rapid expansion may have a significant inhibitory effect, particularly on the innovation activities of private enterprises. In an analysis of the impacts on internal and external innovation, we find that the inhibitory effect is stronger on the internal innovation activities of private owned enterprises and the external innovation activities of private enterprises.More precisely, we find that the inhibitory effect is concentrated in 31.55% of the local enterprises and 45.98% of the privately owned enterprises in our sample. The analysis of internal and external innovation shows that the financial expansion of China's provinces has a significant inhibitory effect on the internal innovation activities of 31.38% of local enterprises and 55.66% of private enterprises. The inhibitory effects on external innovation activities are strongest in enterprises with independent legal personalities and private owned enterprises.These empirical findings not only provide a unique perspective for understanding the theoretical relationship between financial development and innovation in developing countries like China, they also clearly highlight the occurrence and spread of the phenomenon of “shifting from the real economy to the virtual economy” in the financial system and the internal circulation of financial funds in China. They also show the impact of overly rapid financial expansion on the innovation activities of local enterprises. These insights have important policy implications for China as it seeks to accelerate the reform of its financial system through the development of financial services in the real economy and to build a modern industrial system that coordinates the development of the real economy, scientific and technological innovation, and modern finance.