Abstract: Technological innovation is an inherent requirement for transforming economic development mode and achieving sustainable growth, and stimulating micro enterprises’ R&D motivation is a basic premise and important guarantee for the smooth implementation of innovation-driven strategy. Generally speaking, the funds required by enterprises for technological innovation come from both internal and external sources of financing. Since R&D activities require a large amount of initial investment, when internal sources of financing can hardly guarantee the supply of R&D funds, they need to rely on external sources of financing to make up for the shortage of funds. However, R&D activities are characterized by high risks and long cycles, and in the case of information asymmetry, external fund providers are unwilling to take risks, causing the problem of financing constraints for R&D activities. In 2019, China’s social research and experimental development (R&D) spending was as high as 2,214.36 billion yuan, accounting for 2.23% of GNP, but the R&D intensity of large and medium-sized enterprises was only 1.32%, which was a large gap with industrial enterprises in developed countries. As the main body of technological innovation, the lack of capital has become the main obstacle that restricts the improvement of enterprises’ technological innovation capacity, and how to alleviate the financing constraints of enterprises’ R&D activities has become one of the core problems that need to be solved for innovation-driven development. In order to promote enterprises’ R&D investment to reach a socially better level, government departments will formulate incentive policies to supplement enterprises’ R&D funds in order to avoid “market failure”, which is an important supplement to market financing in view of the positive externalities of technological innovation behavior. So, does external financing alleviate the financing constraint of Chinese enterprises’ R&D activities? How effective are the market and governmental approaches in alleviating the financing constraint in practice? This paper will discuss the above questions in detail.
To address the above issues, this paper discusses the intrinsic mechanisms and channels through which financial markets and government public policies alleviate firms’ innovation financing constraints at the theoretical and empirical levels, respectively, using micro data of Chinese manufacturing listed firms from 2010-2019 as the sample. The marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: First, this paper examines the ways to alleviate innovation financing constraints using the modified Euler equation, which not only confirms the existence of financing constraints but also tests the impact mechanisms of different channels, making up for the existing literature’s neglect of the intrinsic mechanism of action. Second, in response to the reality that most enterprises have poor financing channels, the differential implementation effects of different market and government financing channels are empirically tested. And third, the differential effects of alleviating enterprises’ innovation financing constraints under different circumstances are compared and analyzed in three dimensional groupings of ownership nature, marketization level and industry technology intensity to ensure the robustness and reliability of the research findings.
The results of this study show that: There is a general financing constraint in the innovation activities of listed manufacturing companies, equity financing in the market can alleviate the problem with capital shortage, but bank loans and bond financing do not play a corresponding role, or direct financial subsidies in the governmental route do not solve the shortage of funds, and the effect of tax incentives in the form of ex post refund is very significant. From the perspective of different ownership systems, state-owned enterprises have more adequate financing channels, while private enterprises still face more serious financial discrimination, and only tax incentives can play an incentive effect. Regional grouping shows that enterprises in advanced market-oriented regions have richer financing channels, while enterprises in lagging regions have difficulty with obtaining the funds needed for R&D investment through market channels, but public policies do not play the function of “sending charcoal in snow”. The empirical results of different technology-intensive industries show that high-tech enterprises are supported by both the financial market and government, while low-tech enterprises face serious financing difficulties with their R&D investments.

Key words: R&, D investment, financing constraints, Euler equation, government financing, market financing

摘要： 本文基于金融市场和政府公共政策影响企业创新活动资金来源的理论机制,对欧拉方程加以拓展构建研发投资的融资约束模型,以2010—2019年制造业上市公司为样本,就企业技术创新的融资约束问题及其缓解途径进行了实证检验。结果表明:制造业上市公司的创新活动普遍存在着融资约束,市场途径中的股权融资方式能够缓解资金不足问题,银行贷款和债券融资没有发挥相应的作用,政府途径中的直接财政补贴并没有解决资金短缺困境,采用事后返还方式的税收优惠则效果十分显著;从不同所有制来看,国有企业有着较为充足的融资途径,而民营企业仍然面临着较为严重的金融歧视,只有税收优惠能够起到激励效果;地区分组表明,市场化先进地区的企业融资渠道更为丰富,滞后地区的企业难以通过市场途径获得研发投资所需资金,公共政策也没有起到“雪中送炭”的功能;不同技术密集度行业的实证结果显示,高技术企业得到了金融市场和政府层面的共同支持,低技术企业的研发投资面临着严重的融资困境。

关键词: 研发投资, 融资约束, 欧拉方程, 市场, 政府