Air Pollution,Human Capital And Enterprise Innovation

This paper analyzes the micro data of China’s A-share manufacturing listed companies from 2015 to 2019 and the air quality index(AQI)data of China’s prefecture-level cities.Therefore,the author inferred the mechanism of air pollution on enterprise innovation.The author puts forward the following two hypotheses:(1)When the air quality deteriorates from good to bad,the innovation activities of enterprises increase first and then decrease;(2)Facing the same air pollution,the enterprises with larger asset scale are less conducive to innovation.Specifically speaking,from the perspective of geographical location,the above hypothesis(1)is significantly true in eastern and western China,but not in central China.In terms of the nature of enterprises,the above conclusions are significantly true for non-state-owned enterprises,but not for state-owned enterprises.This paper gives a corresponding solution to the result of heterogeneity test Interpretation.Secondly,as far as Hypothesis(2)is concerned,it is significantly true in the three subsamples of state-owned enterprises,eastern China and non-state-owned enterprises,but not in the two subsamples of central China and western China.In order to further explore how air pollution affects enterprise innovation,this paper considers the following two paths:one is the effect of human capital flow,because air pollution will affect the employment location of highly skilled workers,but this impact process will also be affected by other factors such as wage level;the other is the effect of enterprise performance,because air pollution can affect the product sales.In the early stage,with the initial increase of air pollution,energy-saving and environment-friendly products are more popular,thus increasing the business performance of the company.In the later stage,the further aggravation of air pollution at any time will restrict the production activities of enterprises,such as carrying out "production restriction order" or even "stop production order",which makes enterprises have no products to sell and hinders the normal business activities of enterprises.In other words,in the process of air pollution from good to bad,there will be a change from short supply to weak supply,which makes the business performance of enterprises increase first and then decrease.Therefore,the impact of air pollution on enterprise innovation can be realized through human capital flow and business performance change.In addition,this paper also tries to use the explanatory variable with one lag period to regress the results again,so as to overcome the endogenous problem between air pollution and enterprise innovation.