资本市场压力与企业策略性专利行为:卖空机制的视角

创新是一种不确定性高且周期长的投资活动,需要风险偏好更大、对失败容忍更高的市场环境,而资本市场具有筛选和发现创新型企业、有效分散创新风险的功能,因而对创新活动起着关键作用。然而,中国资本市场短期投资者比例高,融券交易成本高且交易不活跃,加上专利评价体系对不同质量的专利区分度较低,导致资本市场压力对创新活动没有发挥出信息机制和治理机制两种效应。相反,资本市场压力带来的负面信息表达渠道和管理层短期业绩压力,造成了中国专利申请中存在“重数量、轻质量”“重申请、轻维护”的企业策略性专利行为所衍生的“专利泡沫”问题。本文采用中国融资融券制度作为准自然实验,考察卖空机制对企业创新的影响效应和作用机理。研究发现,企业面临卖空压力时会更加积极地申请专利,但专利的申请质量有所下降,表现为专利授权率降低;专利结构有所恶化,最终授权数增加的主要是容易研发、授权快的实用新型专利和外观设计专利;专利得到授权后,企业放弃缴纳维持费用以终止专利权。这些策略性专利行为在短期内可以减少企业的卖空交易量,推高企业市值,但长期看对企业的业绩没有积极影响,是一种“创新假象”。卖空机制主要通过施压机制来影响企业创新,管理层业绩压力、外部监督压力、股价信息传递压力越大的企业,在面临卖空威慑时更有动力进行策略性专利行为。为促进企业创新向高质量发展,需要进一步完善融资融券制度和专利评价体系。

Capital Market Pressure and Strategic Patent Behavior:The Perspective of Short Selling Mechanism

Innovation is an investment activity with high uncertainty and long cycle,which requires a market environment with higher risk preference and tolerance of failure.Capital market plays a key role in innovation activities because it has the function of screening and discovering innovation-oriented firms and effectively dispersing innovation risks.China’s Capital market,however,has a high proportion of short term and individual investors,and a high cost of short selling which leading to the less active trade.In addition,the patent evaluation system has low ability to distinguish different quality patents.As a result,capital market pressure does not exert the effect of information and governance mechanisms on firm innovation.On the contrary,the negative information expression and short-term performance pressure caused by the capital market pressure lead to the problem of“patent bubble”derived from firms’strategic patent behavior,such as“valuing quantity over quality”and“valuing application over maintenance”.Using the quasi-natural experiment of short selling mechanism implementation in China,this paper investigates the effect of short selling on firm innovation and discusses the underlying channels.It finds that under the threat of short selling,firms are more active in applying for patents,which leads to a decline in patent authorization rate,indicating the patent quality is declining.The proportion of utility models and designs which are easy to develop and fast to get license in granted patents has rising so that the patent structure deteriorates.After the patent being granted,firms will voluntarily terminate the patent rights by not paying the maintenance fee.The strategic patent behavior can reduce the short-selling volume and increase the firm market value in the short term,but it has no positive impact on the firm performance in the long term,which is a kind of“innovation illusion”.Pressure mechanism plays the dominant role.Specifically,firms with high pressure on performance,external supervision and information transmission of stock price are more likely to carry out strategic patent behavior when facing the threat of short selling.This paper reveals that in order to promote high-quality firm innovation,it is necessary to improve the short selling mechanism and the patent evaluation system.