With the promotion of the patent pledge pilot and the rapid development of patent pledge loans across the country,a proposition worthy of in-depth study is whether the patent pledge has significantly improved the innovation ability of Chinese firms.Or more specifically,can patent pledge notably stimulate firms to increase research and development(R&D)invest-ment and improve patent output,and does it have a positive impact on the patent quality struc-ture of firms?Against the backdrop of ownership disparities in China's credit market,do patent pledge loans exhibit similar characteristics and create new incentive distortions?This paper delves deeply into these pressing questions.Based on the Chinese Firm Patent Survey Data,the total number of patents is used to meas-ure the innovation output of firms,the proportions of R&D expenditures and R&D personnel are utilized to reflect the innovation incentive of firms,and the proportion of invention patents in the total number of patents is employed to characterize the innovation quality of firms.Building upon these measures,this study quantitatively investigates the impact of patent pledges on firms'inno-vation output,innovation incentive,and innovation quality.It is found that the patent pledge significantly improves the innovation capabilities of firms,and its positive effect is not only reflected in the number of R&D outputs represented by the total number of patents,but also in the quality of R&D outputs represented by the proportion of in-vention patents.Further analysis shows that the patent pledge has significantly enhanced the R&D incentives of firms and increased the proportions of R&D expenditures and R&D personnel.Moderating effect analysis depicts that R&D job rewards can help expand the acceleration of the invention patent pledge to the innovation output of firms,but the R&D cycle will inhibit the ac-celeration of the patent pledge to firms'innovation output to some extent.The heterogeneous effect analysis indicates that patent pledge has an impact on the R&D output quantity,R&D out-put quality,and R&D incentives of firms with different ownership and size.However,in com-parison,the positive impact of patent pledges on the innovation output of state-owned enterprises and large corporations is more significant,whereas it demonstrates a more noticeable effect on the R&D investment and improvement in the patent quality structure of non-state-owned enter-prises and small businesses.The empirical results of this paper have provided certain policy en-lightenment for the in-depth development of patent pledge pilot projects and the enhancement of firm innovation capabilities.Compared to existing literature,the paper's novelty primarily lies in two aspects:Firstly,due to the scarcity of micro-level data on patent pledge loans for firms,previous studies have pro-vided limited insights from the perspective of patent pledges regarding firms'innovation behavior,incentives,and capabilities.This paper,leveraging data from the Chinese Firm Patent Survey Data and taking patent pledge loans as the starting point,delves into the impact of patent pledge loans on firms'R&D investments,patent output,and patent quality,serving as a significant complement to existing literature.Secondly,across different provinces and cities nationwide,in-tellectual property bureaus set varying entry thresholds for firms applying for patent pledges and patent quality,leading to potentially diverse impacts of different types of patent pledges on firms'innovation capabilities.Moreover,by examining the distinct responses of state-owned and non-state-owned enterprises to patent pledges regarding their innovation behavior,this study contrib-utes to enriching the literature on ownership disparities and resource allocation.
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