High-speed Rail,external Institutional Environment And Corporate Innovation

Since the sixth national rail speeded up in 2007,China's high-speed rail shows a trend of rapid development.With the high-speed rail's extensive construction in China,regional economic has ushered in the era of high-speed rail,and the important economic regions in China,such as the pearl river delta and the Yangtze river delta,have been expanded.The construction of high-speed rail promotes production factors such as capital,technology and manpower,as well as consumption groups,consumption materials and other consumption factors to gather in cities along the high-speed rail routes,improving factor quality and circulation efficiency,what's more,promoting the integration and upgrading the regional industries.In recent years,the economic effect of high-speed rail has become a hot study of domestic scholars.At present,domestic and foreign scholars mainly focus on the influence of macro level but pay less attention to enterprise level.In addition,China is seeking for economic transformation and upgrading,and it is urgently needed to optimize economic entity structure and enhance competitiveness through corporate innovation."Innovation is the foundation of sustainable development of enterprises and the way to market success," Xi said during a visit to Hangzhou's hightech zone in 2015.Corporate innovation is the foundation of sustainable development and the driving force of regional economic development.Therefore,this paper takes corporate innovation as the entry point,and discusses the economic effect of high-speed rail from the micro perspective.First,based on information asymmetry theory,principal-agent theory,new economic geography theory,innovation theory and existing researches,this paper sorts out the path of high-speed rail's impact on corporate innovation and put forward hypotheses.Specifically,the opening of high-speed rail can promote the flow of talents and capital,reduce information asymmetry and expand market scale,and then promote corporate innovation.Secondly,based on the fact that high-speed rail construction can change the market environment and thus affect enterprise activities,this paper uses the marketization level and legal environment to measure the external institutional environment and test whether the impact of high-speed railway operation on corporate innovation is different under different external institutional environments.In this paper,high-speed rail is regarded as a natural experiment.Taking Shanghai and Shenzhen A-shares of China as the research sample from 2007 to 2016,the samples are divided into experimental group and control group according to whether the prefecture-level city where the listed company is located has opened high-speed rail.The research and development expenditure intensity is selected as the innovation input variable to measure the corporate innovation and study whether the opening of high-speed rail promotes the corporate innovation.Then,it further explores the differences in the impact of high-speed rail operation on corporate innovation under different external institutional environments.By constructing several situations,such as the level of marketization and the quality of the legal environment,the data is divided into groups and returned one by one to observe under which circumstances high-speed rail had a more significant impact on innovation.Then,the relationship between high-speed rail operation,external institutional environment and corporate innovation is analyzed by combining theory and data.The research findings in this paper are as follows:(1)Compared with enterprises that have not experienced high-speed rail operation,high-speed rail operation has significantly improved the innovation level of enterprises in this city.(2)Compared with enterprises in good external institutional environment,when the external institutional environment of the enterprise is poor,high-speed rail operation can promote corporate innovation.The above conclusion is still valid when changing the explained variable,narrowing the sample interval,and conducting PSM+DID test,which proves that the result is basically stable.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward the following suggestions:(1)Enterprises in high-speed rail cities should make full use of their advantages,rationally allocate resources and properly strengthen research and development expenditure investment.(2)Enterprises without high-speed rail should strengthen their ties with high-speed rail cities and actively move towards high-speed rail cities to obtain spillover economic benefits.(3)It is suggested that the site selection of high-speed rail stations should be closer to the regions with backward development of institutional environment.Based on the exogenous event of high-speed railway opening,this paper discusses the relationship between high-speed rail opening and corporate innovation based on existing theories and researches.It is found that high-speed railway opening has a positive impact on corporate innovation,and in the case of poor external institutional environment,high-speed railway opening has a more significant promoting effect on corporate innovation.It is hoped that the study in this paper can provide new evidence for transportation infrastructure construction to promote economic growth and provide certain enlightenment for government departments,enterprise executives and so on.