碳排放交易制度与企业创新质量:抑制还是促进

近年来,有关环境规制与企业创新关系的研究大量涌现,但基于中国碳排放交易制度,尤其是从微观企业层面考察碳排放交易制度对企业创新质量影响的研究仍有待丰富和深化。有鉴于此,采用2008—2016年中国A股上市公司面板数据,以专利申请总量表示创新数量,以发明专利申请和实用新型专利申请分别表示高质量创新和低质量创新,进而采用DID模型构建中国碳排放交易制度对企业创新质量影响的准自然实验框架。同时,为增强实证结果的解释力,采用PSM-DID方法对实证结果进行了稳健性检验、异质性检验以及政府补贴方式的创新激励机制检验。结果表明:①碳排放交易制度在提高"处理组"企业创新数量的同时,也能促使企业兼顾创新质量,但从影响程度来看,碳排放交易制度对低质量创新促进作用更为强劲。②从企业所有权和规模异质性来看,碳排放交易制度主要对国有股份企业和大规模企业创新质量有促进作用,而对民营企业和小规模企业进行高质量创新的诱导力度较小或不显著。③机制检验结果表明,政府补贴政策能够有效弥补碳排放交易制度对高质量创新诱导乏力的不足,但创新激励效果因政府补贴方式而异,其中政府事前补贴优于政府事后补偿;此外,碳排放交易制度通过促使政府为被规制企业提供更多的政府事前补贴,从而有效缓解企业"遵循成本"压力,推动企业转向高质量创新。由此认为,加大对小规模民营企业高质量创新补贴、采取更具灵活性和针对性的创新补贴方式,应是进一步助力碳排放交易制度诱导企业转向高质量创新的政策制定方向。

Carbon emission trading system and firms’innovation quality:suppression or promotion

Recently,there are lots of studies on the relationship between environmental regulation and firm innovation.However,based on China’s carbon emission trading system(CETS),especially from the micro-firm level,it is still necessary to do more research on the impact of CETS on enterprise innovation quality.Based on the panel data of China’s A-share listed firms in 2008-2016,this paper uses total patent application amount to represent the innovation quantity,and uses invention patent application and utility model patent application to represent high-quality and low-quality innovation,respectively.Then we adopt DID model to construct a quasinatural experiment framework of the impact of CETS on firm innovation quality.The paper also uses the PSM-DID method in robustness test,heterogeneity test and government subsidy incentive mechanism test.The results show that:①The CETS can not only significantly improve the innovation quantity in the processing group,but also induce high-quality innovation.However,from the perspective of impact intensity,the CETS is more effective in promoting low-quality innovation.②From the perspective of firm’s ownership and scale heterogeneity,the CETS mainly promotes the innovation quality of the state-owned joint-stock firms and large-size firms,while the induction effect to innovation quality of private-owned firms and small-size firms is low or less significant.③The results of the mechanism test show that the government’s subsidy policy can effectively compensate for the lack of induction for highquality innovation in the CETS,but the incentive effect of innovation varies according to the government’s subsidy types.The government’s subsidy beforehand(GSB)is more effective than the government subsidy afterwards(GSA).In addition,the CETS promotes the government to provide more GSB for regulated enterprises,thereby alleviating the pressure of‘following costs’and effectively promoting enterprises to turn to high-quality innovation.Therefore,increasing the high-quality innovation subsidies to smallscale and private-owned firms,and adopting more flexible and targeted innovative subsidies should be future direction to formulate related polices of encouraging the CETS to induce enterprises to turn to high-quality innovation.