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| Development Zone and Firm Innovation: Excitation or Extrusion？ Evidence from National and Provincial Development Zones |
| CAI Qingfeng, CHEN Yihui, LIN Haihan
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School of Economics, Xiamen University;
College of Finance and Statistics,Hunan University |
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Abstract The development zone is a typical feature of the reform and opening up process that China has undertaken over the last 40 years. Development zones play a critical role in promoting system innovation and assembling production factors. China's development zones are divided into national and provincial development zones. The two types of zone are superficially different in their approval organizations. They differ more significantly in scale, facilities, policy support, and management systems. Accordingly, their impact on enterprises in the region may also differ. Compared with national development zones, provincial development zones are more susceptible to economic and industrial competition between regions. However, few studies address the heterogeneity in the influence on firms of national development zones and provincial development zones.
Innovation activities are an important factor enabling enterprises to gain market competitiveness and achieve sustainable development. They are a driving force for regions to achieve high-quality development. It is therefore important to clarify what effects development zones have on innovation behavior at the micro-enterprise level.
We construct a multi-time differences-in-differences model to conduct the research. We use non-financial listed companies from 2007 to 2018 as a sample, combined with the manual collection and collation of enterprise information in various development zones. Our results show that national development zones can significantly promote innovation in enterprises within the domain, while provincial development zones inhibit enterprise innovation. Mechanism research shows that national development zones encourage enterprises to increase innovation through policy effects and aggregation effects. Provincial development zones, however, are vulnerable to short-term behaviors such as GDP tournaments. They therefore inhibit corporate innovation activities. Our paper also finds that the impact of development zones on corporate innovation activities is heterogeneous in the areas of market environment and property rights. The promotion effect of national development zones on enterprise innovation is more obvious in regions with a higher degree of marketization. This reflects the complementary effects of the visible hand of the government and the invisible hand of the market in national development zones. Regarding ownership heterogeneity, the promotion effect of national development zones on enterprise innovation activities is more obvious in central state-owned enterprises than in non-state-owned enterprises. The extrusion effect of provincial-level development zones on enterprise innovation is also more obvious in state-owned enterprises, especially local state-owned enterprises.
This paper's contributions are as follows. First, we advance the literature on enterprise innovation by examining the effects of different types of development zone on enterprise behavior. Most existing studies focus only on regional-level evidence. Our paper addresses the impact of development zones on the innovation activities of enterprises in the region and reveals the mechanism of this impact. Second, we offer in-depth and extensive insights into development zone construction based on a comparative study of national development zones and provincial development zones. Previous research largely focuses on national development zones. No relevant empirical evidence has been provided regarding the differential impact of national and provincial development zones or the reasons for such differences. Our comparative study of national and provincial development zones also sheds light on aspects of regional GDP competition. Finally, our research expands the literature on government intervention and enterprise innovation from the perspective of development zones.
The paper's main policy implications are as follows. China should highlight the exemplary role of national development zones when constructing development zones. They should also promote the management and institutional mechanisms of provincial development zones to bring them on a par with the mechanisms of national development zones. In particular, the government should speed up the optimization and upgrading provincial development zones. Some should be given stronger foundations and developed into national development zones. Upgrading provincial development zones will enhance regional innovation by providing a more reasonable business environment and management system.
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Received: 29 March 2020
Published: 02 June 2021
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