Summary:
As the core subject of innovation, high-tech enterprises need to bear the high risks and uncertainties of technology research and development.The uncertainty of R&D has greatly dampened the R&D motivation of enterprises, making their innovation decisions more conservative. Therefore, to encourage technology innovation in enterprises, it is necessary to pay sufficient attention to the current risk predicament of enterprise innovation. The equity network of an enterprise has the nature of risk-sharing, which enables the equity network to effectively promote technology innovation by mitigating the R&D risks of the enterprise. Based on Cabrales et al. (2017), this paper further introduces innovation decision-making into the game equilibrium framework of enterprise equity network, focuses on studying the influence of the equity network and its topological structure on micro-enterprise innovation, and then analyzes the formation mechanism of the topological structure of the equity network. Taking the data of listed companies on the main board of China A-share market from 2004 to 2023 as samples, this paper conducts very detailed empirical tests on the risk mechanism by which equity networks affect innovation. The test results confirmed our basic theoretical conclusion. Our findings show that equity network and its large branches can promote innovation. The innovation decision will not only affect firm's own benefits and risks, but also affect related firms through the equity network. Therefore, the Nash equilibrium will determine the equilibrium state of innovation decisions. However, when firms cannot effectively form a stable equity network, due to the lack of risk sharing, firms can only choose a relatively low level of innovation to ensure security. Therefore, equity network promotes innovation through risk sharing. We also find that, within the large branches, large firms have high centrality (core), while small ones have low centrality (periphery), which forms a core-periphery structure (micro topology structure). The large firms have low innovation level, while the small ones have a higher level. This is because the internal topological structure directly determines the heterogeneity of the degree of risk contagion among firms with different scales. Therefore, firms located in the center need to have a more stable earnings and lower degree of innovation, in order to act as the “Ballast Stone” to maintain the stability of the whole branch, thus reducing the risk impact of internal firms; while the peripheral firms can have a higher degree of innovation. Based on this, we put forward the following policy suggestions: The government can provide more policy support and guidance to large enterprises with a higher degree of centrality in the equity network, and take early preventive measures against the possible risk contagion of these important large enterprises to avoid a sudden increase in risks that could affect overall innovation in the network. In addition, the government can further improve the information disclosure mechanism and property rights trading system, and proactively guide enterprises of different types to carry out complementary cooperation in various forms such as equity links. The possible contribution of this paper can be divided into three parts. Firstly, different from the non-institutional risk-sharing mechanisms by which social networks influence innovation in existing studies, this paper takes the enterprise equity network as the research subject, and explores the institutional risk-sharing mechanism, making up for the deficiencies of existing research. Secondly, this paper focuses on exploring the entire network economy system formed by enterprises through equity associations, rather than limiting the attention to the risk-sharing mechanism of the internal equity structure of a single enterprise in existing research. Thirdly, existing studies have focused more on the theoretical relationship between centrality and enterprise scale. On this basis, this paper further introduces the innovation behavior of enterprises and expands the endogenous formation mechanism of the equity network, clarifying the mechanism by which highly stable large enterprises occupying the central position of the network act as ballast stones, promoting technology innovation by reducing the risk level of the overall network branch. Based on the research in this paper, future studies can discuss the dynamic characteristics of the internal topological structure of the equity network, further internalization processing, and the uniqueness of enterprise attributes.
李俊青, 袁博, 张雪莹. 中国上市企业股权网络结构与技术创新——基于风险分担与风险传染的视角[J]. 金融研究, 2025, 542(8): 151-168.
LI Junqing, YUAN Bo, ZHANG Xueying. Equity Network of Chinese Listed Companies and Technological Innovation: Based on the Perspective of Risk Sharing and Risk Contagion. Journal of Financial Research, 2025, 542(8): 151-168.
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