Summary:
Enterprises are the primary drivers of innovation activities in China. Tech-oriented SMEs with high-level technology and strong innovation capabilities are critical driving forces for strengthening the main position of enterprise innovation. However, SMEs have been facing financing difficulties, specifically high financing costs and limited financing channels, which becomes a real dilemma that has long restricted their business operations and growth. In particular, tech-oriented SMEs, characterized by small size, large credit needs, light assets, long time horizons and uncertain profits, typically face more severe financial constraints. In China's bank-dominated financial system, bank credit is the main financing channel for tech-oriented SMEs. Accordingly, commercial banks play a vital role in facilitating the development of technology finance. The unique difficulty of bank lending to tech-oriented SMEs lies in the adverse selection and moral hazard problems caused by the high level of information asymmetry between these firms and potential lenders. The institutional arrangement of intellectual property rights (IPR) protection is particularly important for the financing of tech-oriented SMEs. However, in theory, it is not clear how strengthening IPR protection affects the pricing of bank loans for tech-oriented SMEs. On the one hand, IPR protection can optimize the intellectual property authorization and confirmation process and increase the disclosure of corporate innovation information. Additionally, it can effectively reduce external infringement risks and the uncertainty of IPR value and future returns. All these factors help alleviate information asymmetry and reduce the risks and loan spreads for tech-oriented SMEs. On the other hand, strengthening IPR protection may cause tech-oriented SMEs to significantly increase their investment in cutting-edge technology research, which entails high risks and uncertainties. Simultaneously, the monopoly rent effect may also weaken the incentives for enterprises to improve their products and technologies. Consequently, these factors may exacerbate operational risks of tech-oriented SMEs and cause banks to require higher risk premiums, ultimately raising their loan spreads. Using transaction-level loan data from a commercial bank in Shandong province, this paper exploits the exogenous change in IPR protection caused by the implementation of Regulations of Shandong Province on the Protection and Promotion of Intellectual Property. Employing a difference-in-differences strategy, it identifies the incremental effects of IPR protection on bank financing costs for tech-oriented SMEs and its working mechanisms, thereby verifying the vital role of IPR protection in facilitating the development of technology finance. We find strong evidence that tech-oriented SMEs experience significant reductions in the spread of bank loans after the strengthening of IPR protection. Importantly, the positive effects of enhanced IPR protection on loan spreads are more pronounced for unsecured loans and enterprises in industries with fierce competition and complex technology as well as those with strong innovation capabilities. Our results suggest that alleviating the degree of information asymmetry by reducing IPR-related risks is an effective channel through which IPR protection affects the costs of bank financing for tech-oriented SMEs. In addition, the reduction of the financing costs is concentrated in firms with limited access to bank credit and digital credit. This paper not only builds on and contributes to the related studies on the economic effects of IPR protection and the determinants of financing for innovative firms based on the sample of non-listed tech-oriented SMEs, but also provides empirical evidence based on China's tech-oriented SMEs for the classic information asymmetry and signaling theory and joins a growing literature that documents the importance of institutions for financial development. More importantly, the conclusions of this paper offer policy implications for advancing technology finance by improving IPR protection system, including persistently refine the IPR protection system to transform the IPR institutional strengths into drivers of growth for technology finance, steadily advance IPR finance by strengthening the involvement of financial institutions in the protection, creation and commercialization of intellectual property, deepen the innovation and application of digital technologies to promote the coordinated development of technology finance and digital finance.
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