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| Government Industrial Guiding Funds and Local Firms Innovation: Guiding Effect or Crowding-out Effect？ |
| CAI Qingfeng, LIU Hao, SHU Shaowen
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| School of Economics, Xiamen University |
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Abstract In October 2023, the Central Financial Work Conference emphasized the need to unswervingly take the road of financial development with Chinese characteristics and accelerate the construction of modern financial system. As an innovative exploration of the “Financial Fund Capitalization” and the “Industrial Policies Financialization”, government guidance fund is profoundly affecting regional direct financing market and the innovation activities of local firms. As an important part of the capital market, private equity investment is of great significance to enrich direct financing channels, and an important carrier of innovative capital formation. Unlike Western developed countries, which are generally dominated by market investors, in China, governments at all levels are deeply involved in the private equity fund market, giving birth to government guidance funds with distinct Chinese characteristics. Local governments have become an indispensable participant in the market, profoundly influencing the regional equity investment market and corporate investment decisions. However, the existing research on the government guidance fund mostly lags behind the practical investment. At the same time, as the special representation of the industrial policies financialization, it is particularly necessary to explore the micro-economic effects that may be caused by the disruptive innovation of the way of using financial funds.In view of this, this paper empirically examines the effect of the establishment and development of urban government industry guidance fund on the innovation development of local firms by manually collecting the data of the establishment of urban industrial guidance fund in each city during the period of 2010-2021 and matching them with the innovation data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed enterprises. The results show that a one standard deviation increase in the scale of the urban industry guidance fund leads to a 5.94% increase in the innovation investment of local firms compared with the average level. This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. The mechanism analysis shows that the capital agglomeration induced by the government industry guidance fund will influence the innovation behavior of local firms through the channels of financing effect, information effect, and competition effect. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the innovation promotion effect of government industry guidance fund is significantly greater among growing firms, capital-intensive firms and high-tech firms. In addition, we further compare and analyze the differences of the impact of government industry guidance funds and industrial policies on micro-enterprises innovation, and the results show that the micro-innovation effect of industry guidance funds is significantly larger than that of industrial policies. This paper provides diversified policy insights for local governments to participate in regional financial markets to help micro-enterprise innovation and development: Firstly, local governments should actively adopt market-oriented operation and professional management to screen high-quality investment enterprises and key industries, improve the accuracy of financial funds, and appropriately adopt a combined toolkit of industrial policies and industry guidance funds. Through the diversified combination of subsidies and investment, local governments could achieve the maximum return of financial capital innovation, and promote the precise development of local government policies. Secondly, local governments can pass positive policy signals to the capital market through the appropriate use of the credibility and signaling role of financial funds, help local firms to reduce the cost of equity financing by combining equity investment with other investment modes, guiding and encouraging professional investment institutions to participate in the corporate governance, and provide diversified and practical value-added services.Overall, this paper may have the following marginal contributions: First, this study clarifies the economic effects of capital agglomeration caused by guidance funds, and explores the potential channels of industry guidance funds to promote the development and innovation of local firms from the perspective of more specific equity financing, information governance, and market competition. Second, based on the starting point of capital agglomeration caused by the development of government industry guidance fund, this paper clarifies the positive externalities of the enrichment of regional direct financing channels on the innovative development of local firms. Combined with the perspective of “Industrial Policies Financialization”, this paper compares and analyzes the micro-economic impact difference between the government industry guidance fund and traditional industrial policy, and re-examines the realistic role of the industry guidance fund, and provides a reference for the follow-up study on how the guiding fund and industrial policy release the kinetic energy of regional industrial development.
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Received: 12 December 2022
Published: 10 September 2024
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