关键词: 政府R&D资助, 对外直接投资, 绿色创新

Abstract: In the new era, strengthening green innovation has become a key choice to achieve a “win-win” situation between economic growth and environmental protection. Many studies have shown that OFDI is an important channel for a nation to obtain green technology spillover. However, there is still a debate in the academic community about whether OFDI reversely drives green innovation. Theoretically, green innovation has certain public goods attributes. In the case that enterprises bear the cost of green innovation but do not obtain the income of innovation, if there is a lack of sufficient government R&D compensation, it may inhibit the enthusiasm of enterprises for green innovation. When the individual income of green innovation is greater than the social income, the government’s blind R&D subsidies may lead to R&D resources mismatch and is not conducive to the green innovation of the whole society. In the context of the country’s further promotion of “going global” and green development strategy, if we ignore the government R&D funding and only consider the OFDI reverse green innovation, this may lead to misleading conclusions. Therefore, it is undoubtedly of great practical significance to explore how to scientifically implement a reasonable government R&D funding strategy to maximize the spillover dividend of OFDI reverse green innovation.
Based on the provincial panel data, this paper empirically examines the dynamic effect of government R&D funding on OFDI reverse green innovation by using the threshold model. Firstly, on the basis of analyzing the static characteristics of OFDI reverse green innovation, based on the panel threshold technology of Hansen, the “bootstrap method” is used to simulate the likelihood ratio test statistic for 500 times, and the internal relationship between OFDI and domestic green innovation is tested. Secondly, the triple panel threshold model is used to study how government R&D funding affects OFDI reverse green innovation, and the internal mechanism and law of the dynamic regulation of government R&D funding are described. The optimal regulation interval of government R&D funding is identified, and the robustness test is made from different angles. Finally, from the three groups of eastern, central and western regions and the two groups of the Belt and Road and the non-Belt and Road regions, the spatiotemporal heterogeneity characteristics of OFDI reverse green innovation spillover under the regulation of government R&D funding are explored.
Based on the theoretical deduction and empirical analysis, this paper analyzes the dynamic effect of government R&D funding on OFDI reverse green innovation. The study finds that OFDI has a significant driving effect on domestic green innovation, but this effect presents an obvious U-shaped dynamic evolution characteristic of being first negative but then positive; government R&D funding will positively regulate OFDI reverse green innovation spillover, and there is an optimal government R&D funding interval for OFDI reverse green innovation(0.366,0.428], and too high or too low intensity of government R&D funding will cause dividend loss of OFDI reverse green innovation to some extent; the dynamic impact of OFDI on green innovation under the regulation of government R&D funding has significant spatiotemporal heterogeneity, that is, there are distinct characteristics of the alternating evolution of “incentive effect” and “crowding out effect” in the spatiotemporal dimension.
The limitations of this paper may lie in the following aspects: Firstly, it fails to describe the impact of OFDI on industrial green innovation, and the panel data of industrial and high-tech industries can be further used in the future. Secondly, the analysis based on China’s provincial data is slightly rough, and more subdivided prefecture-level data can be used in the future study to explore the potential regional heterogeneity. Thirdly, what factors will help to release OFDI’s green innovation spillover remains to be explored, and the subsequent analysis can be deepened based on other new perspectives.

Key words: government R&D funding, foreign direct investment, green innovation