Summary:
China's economy has progressed from rapid growth to high-quality development, in which it is necessary to strengthen innovation and improve technological progress to achieve an innovation-driven development mode. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic increased the global level of uncertainty. In view of the changes to the development environment and China's goal of socialist modernization, the fifth plenary session of the 19th CPC Central Committee emphasized “persisting in the core position of innovation in the socialist modernization of China, and strengthening science and technology as a strategic support for national development.” This stressed the urgency of enhancing the ability to innovate. Innovation requires the support of the financial system. However, as China's financial marketization is still incomplete, the allocation of financial resources may be somewhat distorted and the financial support for enterprise innovation remains insufficient. Thus, we take the perspective of finance-driven technological progress and construct an endogenous growth dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) model to analyze the relationship between financial resource allocation, technological progress, and economic growth, and further interpret the underlying dynamic transmission mechanism. We also propose policy suggestions for further financial reform to strengthen innovation and promote high-quality economic development. First, our results show that in the long run, the economic growth rate follows the steady growth level of technological progress, while in the short term economic growth is affected by technological fluctuations. Second, financial resource allocation factors such as equity investment, interest rates, and production investment can affect economic growth by changing the level of production input and technological progress, and we identify a “seesaw” relationship between these two effects. We find the main effect to be through technological progress. The increase of equity investment and the relative tightening of interest rates can promote endogenous economic growth by increasing innovation investment, while an excessive expansion of production investment will crowd out innovation investment and thus inhibit technological progress and economic endogenous growth. Third, as China's technological innovation is counter-cyclical, the following dynamic transmission process of finance, technology, and the economy can be identified. In times of economic expansion, interest rate constraints are relaxed, bank credit and enterprise production increase, and innovation investment is reduced, which will lead to a lower rate of technological and economic growth. Conversely, in times of economic contraction, interest rate constraints are imposed and enterprises will reduce production while innovation investment increases, which will promote technological and economic growth. The policy implications of the study are first that the new contradictions and challenges require new development patterns and opportunities. Further financial reforms should be implemented, the allocation mechanisms for financial resources should be optimized, and the capital market, particularly the equity market, should be used to support innovation. In addition, sound and moderate macro-control policies should be implemented to provide a benign macro environment for enterprise innovation and innovation demand, which can then lead to technological progress and high-quality economic development. We design a novel DSGE model to examine the endogenous growth of finance-driven technological progress, which reveals the mechanism through which commercial banks and equity markets can support the activities of production and innovation. This addresses the deficiencies of other DSGE models of endogenous technological progress, as we identify an allocation mechanism for financial resources. In terms of financial support for production and innovation investment, we simulate the mechanism through which financial resource allocation affects economic growth by changing the production input and the level of technological progress, thus providing a new analytical perspective. In addition, based on our analysis of the impact of financial resource allocation on technological progress and economic growth, we interpret the transmission mechanism underlying finance, technological, and economic development, which extends the current research on their relationships and provides policy guidance.
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