Do Land Subsidies Improve the Quality of Innovation in Industrial Enterprises
The coexistence of rapid growth of land price subsidies and slow improvement of innovation quality presents the"innovation dilemma"faced by Chinese industrial enterprises(CIE).To promote high-quality innovation,the Chinese government has intensified its incentives for technological innovation.Consequently,there has been an explosive increase in the number of innovations produced by Chinese firms.However,the quality of these innovations remains unsatisfactory.This raises the question:why is there such a disparity between the quantity and quality of innovation?In addition to explicit policy incentives for corporate technological innovation,a plethora of implicit subsidies,such as land price subsidies,exist.Between 2007 and 2022,CIE experienced a 35-fold increase in land subsidy values,correlating with higher innovation quality compared to non-subsidized firms.However,this quality of innovation did not increase proportionally with the rising subsidies and even decreased during the period from 2010 to 2012.This paper investigates whether land subsidies truly enhance industrial innovation quality and explores the mechanism involved,while considering the role of industrial agglomeration spurred by these subsidies.This paper constructs a production function with patent quality as the output,and utilizes matched data from CIE,micro land transactions,and patents from 2007 to 2013 to empirically examine the impact of land price subsidies on the quality of industrial innovation and the underlying mechanisms.The results indicate that land price subsidies act as a double-edged sword for innovation.On one hand,they enhance both the quantity and quality of innovation;on the other hand,increasing subsidies can inhibit improvements in innovation quality.Moreover,the innovation quality evaluation system that focuses solely on quantity is inadequate for accurately assessing corporate innovation levels.Lastly,the"land-for-investment"effect of land price subsidies encourages the clustering of industrial enterprises,which enhances innovation quality in areas with higher levels of agglomeration.To improve the innovation quality of CIE,we recommend:implementing high-quality development concepts in innovation practices;controlling land price subsidies within a moderate range while improving innovation incentive policies;and establishing a quality-focused evaluation system to reform innovation assessment.The shift from a quantity-oriented to a quality-oriented evaluation system,is essential for a more accurate assessment of corporate innovation.
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