Government support and innovation for new energy firms in China

Weijian Du and Mengjie Li

Applied Economics, 2019, vol. 51, issue 25, 2754-2763

Abstract: Government support plays an important role in the Chinese economy. New energy industries, which involve innovation-driven sources and environmental protection, are also supported by the government. This paper aims to study the effects of supply-side traditional government support on firms’ innovation and development. We propose a theoretical mechanism and study the innovation reaction of firms to government support in different situations. We further use propensity score matching to verify the results in the theoretical model and conduct a robustness analysis. Our main conclusions include the following. (1) In normal years, government support can promote only the innovation output of firms that have innovated; however, support cannot promote the innovation probability of firms that have not innovated. Government support can only enhance the intensive margin of innovation and cannot enhance the extensive margin of innovation with less competition. (2) In the situation of a bad economic environment and intense competition, firms’ innovation probability rises as government support increases. Therefore, the government should provide more R&D special subsidies and implement strict financial supervision to make support policies effective, especially in normal years.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/00036846.2018.1558356

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