Enterprise Financialization And Technological Innovation Efficiency

In the post-epidemic era,the world economic situation has further deteriorated,but the general trend of the financialization of the economy has not changed,which seriously deviated from the economic growth trend.The trend of financialization of China’s real economy is also deepening.From the macro level,the value added of the financial and real estate industries as a proportion of China’s GDP,which are more likely to generate economic bubbles,is increasing year by year.From the industry level,the gap between the profit margins of real enterprises and those of financial and real estate enterprises is expanding.From the micro level,the scale of financial assets held by the real sector is also increasing.The above phenomena have laid the hidden dangers of rising leverage and "diverting out of real economy ",which are not conducive to the innovation-driven transformation and upgrading of the real economy.In the context of implementing the innovation-driven development strategy,the improvement of enterprise innovation efficiency is not only the way to improve the core competitiveness of enterprises and promote industrial upgrading,but also the key to build a new development pattern.Based on this,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore the relationship between the financialization of real economy and the efficiency of enterprise technological innovation,which is studied in this paper.First of all,this paper constructs the research framework through literature analysis.There is no consensus on the impact of financialization on enterprise innovation efficiency.In the actual operation of enterprises,the motives and results of financial investment are complex,and financialization may bring positive impact on the efficiency of enterprise technological innovation by alleviating financing constraints,providing liquidity storage and avoiding operational risks;it may also bring negative impact on the efficiency of enterprise technological innovation by crowding out innovation resources,expanding asset risks and aggravating the principal-agent problem of inconsistent long-term and short-term management goals.The actual relationship between the two needs to be analyzed empirically.In addition,through the analysis of the fundamental characteristics,this paper argues that the degree of financialization’s impact on the innovation efficiency is inextricably linked to the above-mentioned characteristics,and there is significant heterogeneity in the impact.Therefore,this paper proposes a series of hypotheses about the benchmark results and heterogeneity analysis based on theoretical analysis.Second,this paper tests the validity of the research hypotheses through an empirical model.Based on the theoretical part,this paper determines a series of appropriate indicators and calculations for the study,takes the data of China’s A-share non-financial listed companies from 2008 to 2020 as the research sample;takes the enterprise technological innovation efficiency calculated through the DEA method as the dependent variable;takes the scale of the enterprise’s investment in financial assets as the independent variable;and additionally adds the enterprise size,fixed asset size,operating income growth rate,operating cash flow,gearing ratio,return on total assets,separation rate of two rights,nature of property rights and productivity as nine control variables to construct a panel Tobit model.First,from the full-sample estimation results,there is a significant negative impact of financialization on the efficiency of enterprise technological innovation.Second,from the sub-sample estimation results,for firms with different characteristics,financialization brings different effects on innovation efficiency,confirming the existence of heterogeneity:(a)for the difference in property rights nature,non-state enterprises are more negatively affected;(b)for the difference in technology dependence,non-technology-intensive enterprises are more negatively affected;(c)for the difference in innovation strategies,this paper distinguishes the enterprise innovation strategies into independent innovation strategy and cooperative innovation strategy according to the way of achieving innovation results,which represent independent innovation efficiency and cooperative innovation efficiency respectively,and the study finds that the negative impact of enterprise financialization on independent innovation efficiency is greater.The paper further investigates the possible nonlinear relationship between financialization and enterprise innovation efficiency.Finally,this paper puts forward some practical policy suggestions on how to mitigate the trend of financialization of the real economy and how to improve enterprises’ own innovation efficiency,including:(a)from the perspective of government:1)strengthen the support of inclusive finance for real enterprises and expand the financing channels of enterprises;2)strengthen the construction of intellectual property infrastructure and encourage innovation cooperation;3)strengthen capital market regulation and reform to provide more long-term capital.(b)From the perspective of enterprises:1)establish an internal investment monitoring system;2)actively carry out technological cooperation to enhance the efficiency of innovation resources utilization and information collection;3)introduce diversified management and incentive structures to improve core competitiveness.In summary,this paper examines the impact of financialization on firms’ innovation capability and innovation strategy from a more comprehensive perspective,and explores the non-linear impact characteristics to increase the completeness of the study and achieve the desired research results,which improves on previous studies.