Intellectual Property Protection and Chinese Firms' Markup:Evidence from the Establishment of Municipal Patent Agency
Based on the framework of heterogeneous firm theory model,this paper discusses the micro mechanism of the enhancement of intellectual property protection on firms'markup.Furthermore,using the data of Chinese industrial enterprise database from 1998 to 2015,this paper takes the establishment of municipal patent agency as a quasi-natural experiment and uses intertemporal difference-in-differences method to verify the conclusion of theoretical model.The results show that,the protection of intellectual property rights has a significant positive impact on the firms'markup,and this effect is time-lasting.In addition,the impact of intellectual prop-erty protection has a threshold effect.Only enterprises with innovation ability higher than a cer-tain threshold can increase the markup when intellectual property protection is enhanced.Mecha-nism analysis shows that the"innovation effect"and"competition effect"of intellectual property protection will affect the enterprises'markup.The enhancement of intellectual property protection can improve the innovation ability and reduce the degree of enterprise competition,which is conducive to the increase of Chinese enterprises'markup.
万方数据
