Privatization,Institutional Environment And Innovation Of State-owned Enterprises

Under the situation of comprehensively deepening reform,the mixed ownership economy was proposed to be actively developed in the Third Plenary Session of the 18 th CPC Central Committee,which further clarified the direction of state-owned enterprise reform.In this context,the impact of privatization reform on the business performance of state-owned enterprises has been concerned by scholars.However,as an important driving force for enterprises to maintain competitive advantage and promote sustained economic growth,the effect of privatization on innovation has not received enough attention,and there is no clear conclusion about the research yet.In addition,China is in the transition period,and thus the institutional environment development is quite different among regions.So whether the impact of privatization on innovation will be different due to the differences of regional institutional environment is also a problem yet to be studied.This paper takes the enterprises privatized in 2004 from industrial enterprise database as samples,and then the influence of privatization on innovation is tested by the propensity score matching method.It is found that the privatization of state-owned enterprises significantly promotes the enterprise innovation input and innovation output.The results also show that innovation is positively related to the degree of privatization,that is,the increase in the proportion of non-state equity can promote enterprise innovation.To further test the influence of institutional environment on the relationship between privatization and innovation,this paper takes the marketization level,the market competition environment,the local government intervention,the financial development level and the legal system environment as agency variables of the institutional environment,and then the group regression test is conducted according to the levels of institutional environmental variables.The results show that privatization can't promote enterprise innovation in areas with low marketization,extensive government intervention,underdevelopment of financial market and inadequate legal protection.Only in areas where the market is more developed and the system is perfect,privatization can significantly improve the level of innovation.This research enriches the relevant literature about the economy consequences of privatization and the influence of institutional environment on the relationship between privatization and innovation.Meanwhile,for the government,it has important implications to further promote mixed ownership reform and institutional environment construction,enhance the innovative capability of enterprises and realize innovation-driven development strategy.