| At present,China's economic development has entered a new normal.The insufficient motive force of economic growth and the dual constraints of resources and environment make China face enormous pressure of structural adjustment.Implementing innovation-driven development strategy,improving the quality and efficiency of economic development,and promoting economic transformation and upgrading are important ways to solve the current resource and environmental constraints in China.Therefore,on the basis of the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education,the country put forward the strategic goal of building an innovative country in 2006,and further put forward the strategy of implementing innovation-driven development at the end of 2012.Since the 18 th National Congress of the communist party of China(CPC),Chairman Xi Jinping has repeatedly made new judgments on innovation issues,constantly enriching the theory of socialist innovation with Chinese characteristics,and becoming an important theoretical basis for guiding the practice of China's innovation-driven development strategy.In theory,innovation is not only the result of market choice,but also the result of government promotion.Perfect regional innovation system can not be formed endogenously in the process of operation by market mechanism and economic system.Therefore,the development of regional innovation activities is intrinsically dependent on government forces.Even the more developed western countries have also experienced the process of government-led regional innovation system construction.The government plays an important role in the innovation system,including formulating the innovation strategy and guiding the direction of innovation,shaping the innovation environment,coordinating the economic and social interests of the innovation subjects,and providing basic knowledge and common technology for the application research.In some key areas and special industries,the government should even be the organizer or even the undertaker of innovation projects.In short,the government should play a role in the areas of innovation where market mechanism can not play a role,and where enterprises are unable or unwilling to invest.Exerting government functions and improving government's role in the construction of innovative economy are important guarantees for improving the construction of regional innovation system and improving the quality and efficiency of regional innovation.However,due to various reasons,the government's innovation policies in some areas have failed to achieve the desired results.This has led to a controversy among theorists about the functions and behaviors of the government in innovation activities.To clarify the role and function of government in innovation activities is of great theoretical significance to clarify the current academic debates on "government" and "non-government" in innovation activities and to improve the socialist innovation theory with Chinese characteristics.And it is of great practical significance to guide the construction of China's innovative country and the practice of innovation-driven development strategy.Therefore,on the basis of theoretical analysis,this paper puts forward the "paradox of government support" in innovation activities and analyses the causes of the paradox of government support and affirms the important role of government in regional innovation on the basis of summing up the experience of western developed countries and China in building innovative countries.In empirical analysis,in order to test the function and behavior effect of government in innovation activities,based on panel data of provinces,cities and enterprises,this paper uses panel fixed effect model,quantile regression model and other econometric analysis methods to empirically test the effect of government participation and support for innovation activities,and further confirms the important role of government in innovation activities.Firstly,as to the reasons for the formation of the paradox of government support,this paper holds that it is closely related to the differences in research perspectives of previous literature.The government supports the innovation activities of enterprises in order to obtain the overall social benefits of their innovation activities,not to improve the short-term innovation efficiency of individual enterprises.It is not in line with the original intention of government to study the effect of government support by dividing regional innovation system into independent units.This fragmented research method lacks systematic thinking,ignoring the externality of enterprise innovation and the driving role of regional innovation.One of the important purposes of government subsidies to enterprises is to maximize knowledge and technology spillovers in industrial and regional innovation networks.Ignoring this externality can easily underestimate the effect of government support.Therefore,macro-level research can comprehensively judge the overall effect of government support for innovation.Therefore,based on Provincial Panel data,this paper explores the impact of government science and technology expenditure on regional innovation efficiency.It is found that government expenditure on science and technology can effectively improve the efficiency of regional innovation.This conclusion is still valid after controlling the endogenous problem of variables and the spatial spillover effect of innovation.The government's support for enterprises' innovation can effectively improve the efficiency of regional innovation,while the support for universities and scientific research institutions has no significant effect on the efficiency of regional innovation.In addition,the study also finds that the impact of government science and technology expenditure on regional innovation efficiency is non-linear.When the proportion of science and technology expenditure is between 0.02 and 0.04,the government has the greatest and significant role in promoting regional innovation efficiency.Secondly,previous studies have not yet focused on the impact of official incentives on regional innovation activities.To investigate the effect of government participation in regional innovation activities,we must not avoid the key factor that drives government behavior,that is,officials' incentives.Official incentives directly determine the quality,efficiency and level of government participation in innovation activities.Examining the incentives of officials is an important window to understand the effect of government participation in innovation activities.Therefore,on the basis of theoretical analysis,this paper empirically examines the impact of official incentives on regional innovation efficiency and its mechanism,and draws the following conclusions.Promotion incentives and economic power incentives of local officials can significantly improve innovation efficiency,while corruption caused by rent-seeking incentives can significantly inhibit innovation efficiency.Official promotion incentives and economic power incentives will also reduce government expenditure on science and technology,resulting in loss of innovation efficiency.The rent-seeking incentive will enhance the government's innovation preference and promote innovation efficiency.The net effect of promotion incentive and economic power incentive on innovation efficiency is positive,while the net effect of rent-seeking incentive is negative.Thus,government officials' incentives are closely related to regional innovation activities.In addition,based on the panel threshold model,it is found that moderate rent-seeking and decentralization incentives will improve the effect of government science and technology expenditure,while excessive rent-seeking and decentralization will inhibit the effect of government science and technology expenditure.When promotion incentives are strong,government expenditure on science and technology can effectively promote the efficiency of regional innovation.Thirdly,the city is the space carrier of innovation activities,and the city innovation system is an important part of the national innovation system.The construction of national innovation system is based on the construction of city innovation system.For this reason,this paper will sink the research perspective to the city level,taking the national high-tech zone policy and innovative city pilot policy as an example,to analyze the effectiveness of urban innovation policy in China.Based on the research on the policy of high-tech zones,it is found that the construction of national high-tech zones has significantly improved the level of urban innovation.This conclusion is supported by the robustness test.The results of spatial double difference show that the role of national high-tech zones in promoting the level of urban innovation is not due to the plundering of innovative resources of surrounding cities,on the contrary,the establishment of high-tech zones has a significant spillover effect on both surrounding cities and provincial cities.In addition,the impact of national high-tech zones on urban innovation level is characterized by spatial heterogeneity.In provincial capital cities,municipalities directly under the Central Government and sub-provincial cities,the impact of high-tech zones on urban innovation level is not significant,but can significantly improve the innovation level of general prefecture-level cities.With the improvement of urban innovation level,the promotion of high-tech zones on urban innovation level is characterized by asymmetric "inverted V" change,which first strengthens,then weakens,and then ceases to be significant.However,the study also finds that the regional heterogeneity of the impact of national high-tech zones on urban innovation level is not significant,and the high-tech zones have a significant role in promoting urban innovation level in eastern and central and Western regions.Based on the research of the pilot policy of innovative cities,it is found that the pilot of innovative cities has significantly improved the city innovaton level.X Heterogeneity analysis shows that the pilot policy has a weaker promotion effect on innovation level of municipalities directly under the Central Government,provincial capital cities and sub-provincial cities than that of general cities,and a weaker promotion effect on innovation level of cities with higher quality of education resources than cities with lower quality of science and education resources.And with the improvement of city innovation level,the promotion effect of pilot policies on city innovation level shows a "asymmetric inverted V" change characteristic,which first strengthens and then weakens.The study also finds that the location heterogeneity of the pilot policy on city innovation level is not significant.In addition,the pilot projects of innovative cities can strengthen the strategic guidance of the government,promote the gathering of talents,encourage enterprises to invest and optimize the innovative environment,and then have a positive impact on urban innovation.And the incentive effect on enterprise investment is an important reason for the pilot policy to promote the level of urban innovation.Finally,enterprise is the micro-unit of innovation activities,and manufacturing industry is an industry with more intensive innovation activities.Therefore,based on panel data of listed manufacturing companies,this paper further examines the impact of government subsidies on enterprise innovation decision-making and total factor productivity(TFP).The research shows that government subsidies effectively promote the TFP of enterprises.Quantile regression results show that the marginal effect of government subsidy on enterprise TFP is gradually weakened with the increase of enterprise TFP.Further research shows that R&D investment of enterprises can negatively regulate the effect of government subsidies.That is,the higher the R&D investment of enterprises,the lower the role of government subsidies in promoting the TFP of enterprises.The study of heterogeneity of enterprise ownership shows that government subsidies have a higher effect on TFP of non-state-owned enterprises than state-owned enterprises.Within state-owned enterprises,subsidies have a higher effect on the TFP of central state-owned enterprises than local state-owned enterprises.In addition,the regression results of intermediary effect show that government subsidies can also stimulate enterprise R&D,thus promoting enterprise efficiency.Therefore,we should attach importance to the role of government subsidies in the development of enterprises,adopt diversified subsidies schemes and measures according to the characteristics of enterprises,and promote the efficiency of manufacturing enterprises.This paper demonstrates the role and function orientation of government in supporting innovation-driven development,and studies it from three levels: provincial level,city level and enterprise level,and discusses the effect of government's behavior in supporting innovation activities.The conclusion of this paper affirms the important role of government in innovation activities,clarifies the debate on the effectiveness of government innovation policy to a certain extent,and provides theoretical basis and practical guidance for government to support innovation activities. |
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