| In the environment of increasing global competition,technological competition has gradually become the commanding heights in this tide.With the profound changes in the world situation,China has paid more and more attention to scientific and technological innovation.The 14 th Five-Year Plan also proposes to strengthen the nation through science and technology,to improve the new national system under the conditions of the socialist market economy,to grasp the core technologies,and to improve the efficacy of overall innovation chain.Innovation is essentially an economic activity mainly led by micro-enterprises.Compared with traditional manufacturing enterprises,high-tech enterprises have obvious competitive advantages in terms of knowledge,technology,talents and funds etc.,so it is an essential task for local government to attract high-tech enterprises.In the context of changes in the domestic and international economic environment,the way that local governments perform their economic functions has undergone a major shift: from attracting investment to optimizing the business environment.The competition among governments has changed from a single strategy of relying on special preferential policies and low-cost elements to a comprehensive game of building a government environment,a law environment,a sound market environment,and an international environment and thus optimizing the business environment has become a way to improve the governance system and governance capability modernization for local government.Therefore,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to optimize the business environment to attract high-tech enterprises,and to explore the factors and transmission mechanism of the business environment affecting the location selection of high-tech enterprises.However,existing research focuses more on the impact of business environment on foreign direct investment,corporate innovation,and corporate performance,as well as few on location selection of high-tech enterprises.Moreover,many scholars study the spatial layout of high-tech industries from the meso-level,and lacks research based on the micro-level.Therefore,based on the theory of institutions and transaction costs,the theory of external economic and industrial agglomeration and the theory of resource dependence,the paper review the domestic and foreign theoretical and empirical studies on the business environment and location selection of high-tech enterprises,as a result,the Two-sectors Model is constructed.At the same time,based on the particularity of the location selection of high-tech enterprises,a business environment evaluation index system was constructed from six dimensions: technological innovation environment,market development environment,intellectual property protection environment,geographical location environment,financial market environment and infrastructure environment.The paper adopts entropy weight method to calculate the index weight and calculates the comprehensive score of the business environment of each province,and deeply studies the influence of the business environment on the location selection of high-tech enterprises and its transmission mechanism.In the status analysis part,the temporal and spatial characteristics of China’s business environment are analyzed based on the spatial quartile map method,the kernel density estimation method and the Dagum Gini coefficient method;the spatial and temporal characteristics of the distribution of high-tech enterprises in China is visualized by the Arc GIS tool based on the regional gravity center method and the spatial correlation test method.In the empirical analysis part,the conditional Logit model is used to study the impact of the comprehensive indicators of business environment on the location selection of hightech enterprises.At the same time,considering the important role of agglomeration factors in the location selection of enterprises,it further examines the agglomeration factors on the business environment of high-tech enterprises and moderates the influence of location selection.Based on different ownership,different regions and different development zones,the heterogeneity analysis of enterprises is carried out;from different perspectives such as replacing variables,deleting samples,changing alternative provinces,change estimation methods and instrumental variable methods robustness test.At the same time,taking the high-tech industrial development zone as an experiment,the double difference method and the PSM-DID method are used to examine the impact of the establishment of the high-tech industrial development zone on the location selection of high-tech enterprises.In the mechanism inspection part,the paper analyzes the transmission mechanism of the business environment affecting the location selection of high-tech enterprises from two aspects: industrial structure and technological innovation level.This study examines the impact of business environment on the location selection of high-tech enterprises from different perspectives and discusses the heterogeneity and transmission mechanism of its impact.A variety of statistical,measurement and estimation methods such as kernel density estimation method,Dagum Gini coefficient method,regional gravity center method,the spatial correlation test method,the doubledifference method,the mediation effect model,the PSM-DID and the instrumental variable method are adopted,which is expected to overcome the problem of sample selection bias and endogeneity and to enhance the robustness of the estimation results.The major findings of this study are as follows:First,the overall evaluation of China’s business environment and its spatial and temporal characteristics.From the perspective of comprehensive indicators of business environment,from 2008 to 2018,the comprehensive scores of business environment in all provinces continued to improve,which shows that the business environment has been increasingly optimized.In spite of this,China’s overall business environment,however,is still under-developed and there is gap between regions and thus the indices in various aspects are to be further improved.The characteristics of regional development of business environment are as follows: the business environment of the leading provinces in the eastern region is fiercely competitive;the business environment in the areas with relatively good economic development in Central China has improved significantly;the western region shows the "Matthew Effect"-a larger gap between the strong and the weak.Judging from the evaluation results of the business environment,the average scores of the six sub-indices of the business environment in the eastern region are higher than the national average level,and they have obvious advantages in terms of geographical location environment.Through the analysis of the temporal and spatial characteristics of China’s business environment,it is found that the development level of China’s business environment generally presents the characteristics of spatial differences that are relatively high in the eastern coastal areas and relatively low in the central and western regions,showing a spatial gradient distribution pattern from coastal areas to inland areas.Through the analysis of the Gini coefficient of the comprehensive score of the business environment and the decomposition results,we can see that the differences in the business environment of China’s provinces mainly come from regional differences.Second,spatial distribution characteristics of high-tech enterprises in China.Based on the regional gravity center method and the spatial correlation test method,the ARCGIS tool is adopted to visualize the spatial and temporal characteristics of the distribution of high-tech enterprises in China,namely more in eastern region and less in central and western regions,and it is manifested as a spatial distribution pattern with a decreasing gradient from coastal areas to inland areas.Judging from the evolution trajectory of the location center of high-tech enterprises,the specific moving direction of the location center of high-tech enterprises in China changes in different years,and there are certain fluctuations in longitude and latitude.They move in all directions,but mainly to the northeast.Through the global spatial autocorrelation analysis,it is found that under the spatial proximity weight matrix and the geographic weight matrix,the spatial distribution of Chin’s high-tech enterprises does not show obvious spatial dependence.Under the economic distance weight matrix,the spatial distribution of China’s high-tech enterprises presents a positive spatial dependence,and shows obvious periodic fluctuation characteristics.The Moran’s I value under the weight matrix of economic distance has experienced a decline from 2008 to 2013 and a rise from 2014 to 2018,showing an overall "U"-shaped change trend.During the rising period,the spatial dependence between provinces with similar levels of economic development continued to strengthen,and during the declining period,it gradually weakened.The overall value was increasing,indicating that this spatial dependence was strengthening.Therefore,China’s high-tech enterprises show a strong spatial agglomeration distribution pattern in provinces with similar economic development levels.Although they have experienced periodic fluctuations,the overall agglomeration has shown a trend of increasingly strengthening.Based on the Moran scatter plot of local spatial autocorrelation,it is found that the spatial distribution of high-tech enterprises presents a low-low spatial agglomeration trend.Third,analysis of the effect of business environment on the location selection of high-tech enterprises.Based on the conditional Logit model test,it is found that hightech enterprises are more inclined to areas with more favorable business environment when choosing locations.Through the adjustment effect of agglomeration factors,industrial agglomeration has significantly improved the probability of high-tech enterprises entering areas with more favorable business environment.Based on the heterogeneity effect analysis,it is found that the business environment has no significant impact on the location selection of state-owned high-tech enterprises,while private and foreign-owned new high-tech enterprises are more willing to choose areas with more favorable business environment.The business environment has increased the possibility of high-tech enterprises in the eastern and western region choosing the corresponding province but the effect could hardly be seen in the central region;the development of the business environment has increased the possibility of entry of hightech enterprises into the high-tech industrial development zones and economic &technological development zones,which is is greater than that in the non-development zones.The robustness test found that by replacing the core explained variable high-tech enterprise location selection by the 0-1 binary variable with the number of high-tech enterprises,the results were basically consistent with the benchmark regression results,except for the difference in numerical value;at the same time,the Poisson regression model and the negative binomial regression model are introduced to test whether the employment of the conditional Logit model leads to biased estimation results.The regression results show that there is only small differences in the estimated coefficients among the three estimation methods,which justifies the selection of conditional Logit model in this paper;the rate of harmless waste disposal is selected as an instrumental variable of the business environment for analysis,and it is found that the estimated results are still robust.Fourth,re-examination of the impact of business environment on location selection of high-tech enterprises: a quasi-natural experiment based on high-tech industrial development zones.This paper takes the national high-tech zone policy as a quasinatural experiment,and uses the double-difference method to test the effect of the national high-tech zone policy on the location selection of high-tech enterprises and its transmission mechanism.Conclusions are drawn as follows: First,the national hightech zone policy has significantly promoted the entry of high-tech enterprises.At the same time,the PSM-DID estimation result supports the results of the benchmark regression,providing the empirical support for the incentive effect of the business environment on the entry of high-tech enterprises.Second,based on the heterogeneity analysis of urban location,it is found that the national high-tech zone policy significantly promotes the entry of high-tech enterprises in the eastern and central regions,while the establishment of the national high-tech zone in the western region has barely any impact on the entry of high-tech enterprises.The heterogeneity analysis of city size found that the national high-tech zone policy significantly promoted the entry of high-tech enterprises in medium and large cities,while the establishment of national high-tech zones in small cities had no impact on the entry of high-tech enterprises.The heterogeneity analysis of the growth cycle of high-tech zones found that mature national high-tech zones are more attractive to high-tech enterprises than growing ones,while those in the forming stage are not conducive to the entry of hightech enterprises.Third,a robustness test is carried out by means of a placebo test and excluding special years,showing that the estimated results are robust.Fourth,the mechanism test shows that the national high-tech zone affects the location selection of high-tech enterprises by affecting the industrial structure and technological innovation level.Fifth,the mechanism test on how the business environment affects the location selection of high-tech enterprises.Taking 30 provinces in China from 2008 to 2018 as samples and by means of conditional Logit model,this paper explores the influence mechanism of business environment on the location selection of high-tech enterprises.The research results show that there is a strategic competition and interaction behavior in the business environment between provinces,thus forming a spatial spillover effect of the regional business environment,which in turn affects the location selection of high-tech enterprises.At the same time,the business environment can affect the location selection of high-tech enterprises by affecting the industrial structure and technological innovation level.The last,a case study of the impact of business environment on the location choice of high-tech enterprises.We have selected 60 national high-tech zones established before 2008 as research samples to evaluate the effect of talent policy in high-tech zones from three aspects: the number of high-tech enterprises,their operating income and the total industrial output in high-tech zones.The results show that the more favorable the talent policy and the more complete the supporting facilities are in the high-tech zone,it can attract more high-tech enterprises to settle in and thus the faster the business income and total industrial output of enterprises increase,indicating that the high-level talents gathered by the optimization of the business environment in the high-tech zone can effectively attract the entry of high-tech enterprises. |
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