A Study On The Peer Effect Of R&D Investment Of Listed Companies In China

This paper takes China’s economic development in the "new normal" period as the background.Faced with the need to transform and upgrade to an innovationdriven development model,enterprises,as the main economic body and the main innovation body,play a key role in their R&D investment decisions.Due to the high uncertainty of R&D output,enterprises in the same industry often interact with each other in their R&D investment decisions,leading to a convergence of R&D decisions among enterprises in the same industry,which is known as the "peer effect".This paper conducts a series of tests on the existence of the peer effect,volatility characteristics and moderating effects using mean regression models with a sample of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen in China from 2009 to 2021.The results show that there is a peer effect in the R&D investment decision of A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen in China,and this peer effect has an asymmetric fluctuation pattern.The peer effect among companies is more significant when the R&D investment rate decreases than when the R&D investment rate increases.The results of the sub-sample moderating effect show that: when the industry market concentration is low,the peer effect of R&D investment among firms will strengthen significantly as the industry market becomes more concentrated;for firms with a high market share in the industry,an increase in market share will reduce the peer effect,but an increase in the industry market concentration will strengthen the peer effect.The purpose of this paper is to explore the peer effect of R&D investment in China’s listed companies,summarize its characteristic laws,provide suggestions for the industrial policy formulation.Namely,to enhance the flexibility and precision of industrial policies,and to designate differentiated industrial policies according to enterprises’ industry status.Thus,on the premise of financial health,the peer effect of the decision to enhance the rate of R&D investment shall be amplified.In turn,it will improve the effectiveness of industrial policies is,level-up R&D investment at the industry level,enhance China’s core competitiveness in science and technology,and promote the transformation and upgrading of our economy.