Going out to innovate more at home: Impacts of outward direct investments on Chinese firms' domestic innovation performance

This study explores the effects of cross-border mergers & acquisitions (CBMA) on domestic innovation of Chinese firms. We build a new panel dataset that matches information on CBMA and innovation activities for China's publicly listed firms. We rely on matching techniques combined with a difference-in-differences estimator to study the causal effects of CBMA respectively on firms' investments in innovation, innovation outputs, and financial performance. The main findings reveal that CBMA has both a positive impact on firms' R&D spending and number of patent applications, no statistically significant effect on the number of granted patents or on the quality of those patents, and a negative effect on firms' financial performance. These results depend, however, on the type of CBMA (horizontal or vertical), destination country (OECD or non-OECD), and the technological intensity (high-tech or not) of the acquirer and target firm. Overall, the findings bring into question whether CBMAs, and China's going-out strategy, will significantly boost its indigenous innovation capabilities.     

Roads to innovation: Firm-level evidence from People's Republic of China (PRC)

Although infrastructure and innovation play important roles in fostering a country's economic growth, discussion in the literature about how the two are connected is limited. This paper examines the impact of road density on firm innovation in the People's Republic of China. The analysis uses a matched patent database at the firm level and road information at the city level. Regional variation in the difficulty of constructing roads is used as an instrumental variable to address the potential endogeneity problem of the road variable. The empirical results show that a 10% improvement in road density increases the average number of approved patents per firm by 0.71%. Road development spurs innovation by enlarging market size and facilitating knowledge spillover.     

Broadband internet and enterprise innovation

Based on microdata from China's listed companies and macrodata for broadband internet access in prefecture-level cities, this paper explores the relationship between broadband internet and enterprise innovation. Using the change in market concentration caused by the North–South separation reform of China Telecom in 2002 as an instrumental variable, the results show that in general, a 1% increase in broadband internet access results in a 1.395% increase in the number of corporate patents. Specifically, the number of valid patents, patent citations and valid patent citations, reflecting patent quality, increases by 1.499%, 0.920% and 0.763%, respectively. The mechanistic analysis shows that broadband internet access contributes to increasing the number of R&D personnel and personal innovation efficiency, enhancing enterprises' willingness to innovate, and easing financing constraints. Further analysis suggests that broadband internet access mainly promotes invention patents rather than design patents. The innovation effect is more evident among high-tech, inventor-intensive, state-owned enterprises and enterprises located in the non-southeastern coastal region of China.     

The innovation of family firms in China: New evidence from the China employer-employee survey

Drawing on China Employer-Employee Survey data collected in 2018, this study examines the effects of family ownership on firm innovation in China. Baseline regressions suggest that Chinese family firms have significantly lower R&D investment and number of patents than non-family firms, and the results are not sensitive to response quality, unobserved characteristics, and non-random assignment of family ownership. Furthermore, this gap can be effectively explained by the lower management quality of family firms. Heterogeneous analyses indicate that the low innovation of family firms appears only in more competitive environments. To improve innovation, we suggest that Chinese family firms should make increased efforts to upgrade their management.     

Does participating in the standards-setting process promote innovation? Evidence from China

This paper provides novel empirical evidence on the positive effect of standards-setting involvements on corporate innovation in China, reflecting in improving the patent quantity and patent quality. This kind of positive effect increases as the firm's top management team quality increases. We also show that the positive effect of standards-setting involvements is more evident for state-owned enterprises than non-state-owned enterprises due to the unique features of state-owned enterprises. Our results are robust to a battery of tests, including the use of alternative model specifications, firm fixed effects, the instrumental variable approach, potential omitted variables, and propensity score matching procedure. Further analysis reveals that standards-setting involvements foster innovation mainly through improving firms' R&D efficiency, reducing financial constraints, and inducing collaborative innovation. Overall, our findings suggest that standards-setting involvements matter for corporate innovation in China.     

Global Innovative R&D Offshoring with Heterogeneous Labor: The Role of IPR‐Protection on Technology Transfer and the Brain Drain Effect

Using a North–South framework, this study proposes a theoretical general equilibrium model with multiple Northern firms offshoring innovative R&D to the South. Northern firms vary in their ability to manage Southern researchers, and Southern researchers vary in quality. Southern researchers of higher quality are more productive but also more likely to leave the firm and start a competing firm through imitation of the product. A strengthening of Southern IPR‐protection increases offshoring, global welfare, and innovation while eliminating employment opportunities for skilled Southern researchers. Therefore, stronger Southern IPR‐protection has the potential to contribute to the emigration of highly qualified researchers. The model then predicts the effects of changes to the Northern country as a result of this increased emigration. Increases in Northern technology increase offshoring and innovation while decreasing the amount of technology transferred. The effect of an increase in Northern researcher quality depends on the degree of the increase in productivity as a result of the higher quality workers.     

The Real Effects of Real Earnings Management: Evidence from Innovation

We examine the consequences of real earnings management from an innovation perspective and investigate the patent output of firms likely to be managing earnings through altering their R&D expenditures. We find that R&D cuts related to earnings management lead to fewer patents, less influential patent output, and lower innovative efficiency compared to other R&D cuts. Our results thus suggest that real earnings management may obstruct firms’ technological progress and highlight the potential costs of managerial manipulation of R&D expenditures to alter reported earnings.     

Import Policy Uncertainty and Innovation

The Chinese government has emphasized innovation as the primary driving force for economic development in the new era. This paper studies the effect of import policy uncertainty (IPU) on the innovation activity of Chinese manufacturing firms. It establishes a simple model to show that the presence of IPU encourages innovation and that a reduction in IPU discourages innovation. It distinguishes the almost unnoticed IPU reduction from tariff reduction on China's WTO accession and develops a novel difference-in-differences specification that identifies the negative effect of IPU reduction on innovation using updated data for Chinese manufacturing and patent filings. The result holds after a battery of identification assumptions and robustness checks are considered. The import channel explains about two thirds of the effect of IPU on innovation, but not all of the effect. Finally, this paper examines the effect across firms of different levels of productivity and ownership types and patents of different categories.     

中国企业创新为何重数量而轻质量——数量增长目标考核视角

数量增长目标考核是中国创新政策的重要特色。由于政策实施过程中普遍存在信息问题和机会主义，数量增长目标考核会引发微观创新主体的适用性策略行为。文章通过手工搜集和匹配上市公司专利数据，建立双重差分模型，尝试从专利数量增长目标考核视角，考察中国2010年实施的《全国专利事业发展战略（2011-2020年）》这一重大创新战略对企业创新行为的影响，发现该战略对企业专利数量增长具有显著的促进作用，而对专利质量提升具有抑制效应，表明专利数量增长的目标考核会导致企业"重数量、轻质量"的专利申请行为。异质性分析的结果表明，民营企业以及创新能力偏低的企业更倾向于采取"重数量、轻质量"的专利申请行为。进一步，该战略主要通过财政补贴、税收优惠和信贷扶持等政策措施引导企业专利申请行为。这些结论为引导中国企业高质量创新行为的政策目标设计、政策工具选择及分类精准施策提供了有益启发。     

Policy certainty and heterogeneous firm innovation: Evidence from China

This paper investigates how policy certainty affects firm innovation activities. The identification hinges on the overlap of the elite dualism system in China. Naturally, a city Party leader served as the prior mayor in the same city is more likely to carry out the policy decisions made by the previous local administration, since he/she is one of the crucial leaders to make these decisions. In this circumstance, the policy certainty level would be higher for local listed firms. We find that the patent filings of listed firms, who enjoy a more stable local policy environment, significantly and substantially increase into the future. Such positive effects are robust to different model specifications and subsample analyses. Moreover, this paper documents the role of heterogeneity in the effects of policy certainty on firm innovation. The increased patent filings caused by a higher level of local policy certainty are mostly driven by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and firms having lower financial constraints. We further show that a higher level of local policy certainty would increase the stability of government subsidies received by firms, so the listed firms can more aggressively engage in innovation activities.     

Pricing to market, firm heterogeneity and the role of quality

We build a pricing-to-market (PTM) model with firm heterogeneity, which allows for imperfect competition and market segmentation in the presence of flexible exchange rates, horizontal and vertical differentiation and different tastes of consumers in destination markets. We derive firm’s pricing behaviour in response to price and quality competition shocks. We show that there is PTM heterogeneity across firms if quality has a role. We empirically assess the main predictions of our theoretical framework on Italian firm-level data. We document that export-domestic price margins are significantly affected by price and quality competitiveness factors even controlling for foreign demand conditions, size, export intensity, destination markets and unobservables. Finally, we provide evidence of strong heterogeneity across firms in their reaction to price and quality competitiveness.     

从主要专利质量指标看我国专利的发展水平

我国专利数量在国际上位居世界前列,表明已经形成了较强的知识产权保护意识和专利创造能力,但对数量上的成就需要客观冷静地分析。从专利质量角度对我国专利发展水平进行研究,在提出国家专利质量主要测度指标的基础上,对我国专利质量与国际领先水平进行比较分析,发现我国专利在申请质量、国际化水平、有效维持时间和技术影响力4个维度均比较落后。在研究结果的基础上,最后提出了促进我国专利质量水平提升的政策建议。     

财政科研项目管理政策对提升专利质量的影响及其机制研究

高质量专利是支撑国家实现创新发展的战略性资源。通过梳理专利质量、专利价值与科技创新活动的关系，明晰政府在提升专利质量中的定位和作用。基于基本政策工具和科技成果价值链构建二维分析框架，梳理评估现有政策及运行情况，研究影响科技创新产出专利质量的因素，找准制约提升科技创新专利质量的财政科技管理体制的瓶颈。为完善财政科技项目管理体制，提升专利质量提供具体的政策建议。     

Innovation and exporting: evidence from Spanish manufacturing firms

This paper investigates the relationship between innovation and the export behavior of firms using data from a representative panel of Spanish firms over 1991–2002. It presents a simple theoretical model of the firm decision to export and innovate that guides the econometric analysis. Consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model, the econometric results suggest a positive effect of firm innovation on the probability of participation in export markets. The results further reveal the heterogeneous effects of different types of innovations on the firm export participation. In particular, product upgrading appears to have a larger effect on the firm export participation than the introduction of cost-saving innovations. These findings are robust to firm unobserved heterogeneity, dynamic specifications, and to the use of instrumental variables to control for the potential endogeneity between innovation and exporting.     

Firm Productivity,Innovation, and Financial Development

How do firm‐specific actions—in particular, innovation—affect firm productivity? What is the role of the financial sector in facilitating higher productivity? Using a rich firm‐level data set, we find that innovation is crucial for firm performance as it directly and measurably increases productivity. The impact of innovation on productivity is larger in less‐developed countries. Evidence of financial sector development influencing the innovation‐productivity link is weak, but the effect is difficult to identify due to correlation between indicators of a country's financial and nonfinancial development. Furthermore, we find evidence that the innovation effect on productivity is more significant for high‐tech firms than for low‐tech firms.     

事务所合并对审计质量影响——基于中国第三次事务所合并浪潮的实证研究

中国第三次事务所合并的浪潮仍然继续,事务所合并是否影响其审计质量值得关注.文章采用2005—2008年合并事务所的样本,考察了合并事务所合并前后的审计质量差异,发现事务所合并影响合并事务所的审计质量,总体的研究结果表明事务所合并后审计质量没有提高.分组检验发现:规模小、以新设合并方式合并以及审计的上市公司盈余管理为正的合并事务所,合并后较合并前审计质量变低;规模大、以吸收合并方式合并以及审计的上市公司盈余管理为负的合并事务所,合并前后审计质量没有显著差异.     

Skilled-Labor Intensity Differences Across Firms,Endogenous Product Quality,and Wage Inequality

This paper proposes a theory to explain the relative wage-rate increase for skilled labor that results from trade liberalization that relies on within-sector reallocations of production resources (skilled and unskilled labor) across firms. Motivated by some stylized facts, in a model with firm heterogeneity, including firms that differ in their skill intensity even within a narrowly defined industry, firms with relatively high skill intensity that are more likely to be exporters, and a positive association between a firm’s skill intensity and its product quality, I develop a general equilibrium model where firms with a higher skill intensity endogenously choose a higher-quality product, and tend to be more profitable. In this framework, a reduction in trade costs allows members of the workforce to reallocate to more efficient firms that produce higher-quality products, using their skilled labor more intensively, resulting in a rising skill premium. The main sources of the increasing wage inequality that followed trade openness are a positive link between a firm’s skill intensity, its product quality, and quality competition.     

跨国公司对东道国企业技术创新的影响

在下游企业顺序进入市场条件下,本文分析了跨国公司对于上游企业创新动机的影响。我们的研究表明:上游企业的创新投入既取决于其国有股的比重又取决于下游企业的国别属性以及市场势力。具体而言,如果上游企业是一个私营企业,那么下游企业的国别属性不影响其研发投入。相反,倘若上游企业是一个纯粹的国有企业,那么只有当下游企业均为国外企业时,其研发投入不足,在其他情况下,上游企业的研发投入相同。假如上游企业是一个部分国有企业,那么下游跨国公司的市场势力越大,其研发动力越低。     

Short-term loans and Firms' high-quality innovation: Evidence from the access to patent-backed loans in China

When obtaining short-term loans, an innovative firm tends to expand its production scale, thereby reallocating its R&D-related resources away from innovation. By exploiting the unique situation in China that patenting firms for the first time obtained short-term patent-backed loans (PBLs), we find that the PBL access negatively influences firms' propensities of producing high-quality innovation. Consistent with the R&D resource reallocation hypothesis, we find that this negative effect exists only among firms initially having invention patents; it is more pronounced when the PBL covers a larger portion of firm investment and when these firms expand more aggressively. We confirm the scale expansion effect by finding that the PBL access positively influences firms' subsequent size.     

The role of research and ownership collaboration in generating patent quality: China-U.S comparisons

This paper uses patent data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to investigate the association between inventor collaboration and joint assignee ownership, both domestic and international, and patent quality as measured by the number of claims and citations associated with a patent. Specifically, we compare the quality implications of research collaboration and joint patent ownership for the quality of U.S. and Chinese patents. Overall, we find that domestic inventor collaboration is associated with higher quality results for U.S. patents than Chinese patents. However, for China, international collaboration is associated with more positive quality outcomes; for U.S. patents, international collaboration implies lower quality than that associated with domestic U.S. collaboration. Part of this disparity is due to substantially different quality outcomes associated with joint U.S.-Chinese patents – quality gains for China and quality reductions for the U.S. We also investigate the quality implications of different organization-centered research, including dyadic and triadic collaborations, for patent quality as well as the quality implications of various assignee-inventor relationships, operating through incentive and scale effects. While most firms, particularly those in the U.S., appear to exploit advantages of fewer owner-assignees coordinating the scale benefits of more inventors, universities and research institutes in China appear to rely less on coordination-scale effects and more on the incentive effects associated with assigning patent ownership to inventors.