| At present,the international environment of China’s development is becoming increasingly complex,the rise of technological nationalism on China’s technology blockade more and more strict,relying on the “import-digest-absorb-re-innovation” technology development model to help rapid economic development is no longer sustainable,the need to strengthen independent innovation,breakthroughs in key core technologies,accelerate the transformation of technological achievements,so as achieving the high-end industrial chain,in order to cultivate new momentum of development.At the same time,under the double pressure of developed countries’ technological blockade and developing countries’ accumulation of force catching up,the international competition pattern has deeply changed,and the problems of China’s manufacturing enterprises being big but not strong and full but not fine have become increasingly apparent,while as an important carrier of technological innovation,promoting the high-quality development of manufacturing industry has become an important strategic layout of China’s economic high-quality development under the new development pattern.In order to compensate for the loss of externalizing of innovation behavior,alleviate the financing constraints on the innovation process and cope with the uncertainty of innovation activities,etc.,the same as most countries in the world has formulated industrial policies on government subsidies and tax incentives as the main tools to stimulate enterprise innovation,China has also introduced relevant industrial policies to overcome market failure.However,the debate on whether industrial policies should be pursued is still inconclusive,and testing different industrial policies and using different data and methods may generate completely opposite conclusions;therefore,it is more important to discuss how to implement them to make them more effective.This paper takes the selective tax incentive policy,the Administrative Measures for the Identification of High-tech Enterprises promulgated in 2008,as an example,and uses the data of listed manufacturing companies from 2008-2019,and finds that the policy execution induces enterprises to engage in R&D catering behavior in order to obtain policy benefits.In-depth analysis of its impact on innovation performance and the moderating role of political connections with this process are conducted,and finally,the integrated analysis of the implementation effect of the policy and the distorting effects of R&D catering behavior is conducted with a view to guiding the government to better implement industrial policies.First of all,after examining the institutional background of the Recognition Measures,it is found that R&D intensity is one of the more important recognition standards,and the non-transparent nature of R&D information and the high discretion of enterprises in the attribution of R&D expenses,coupled with the fact that the higher cost of government supervision and lower penalties result in lower costs of non-compliance for enterprises,increase the possibility of enterprises engaging in R&D catering behaviors.Companies that engage in R&D catering behavior may choose between capitalization and expensing R&D,and may even misclassify expenses that are not part of R&D activities as R&D expenses,or“window dressing” their statements to meet policy requirements by constructing real economic activities.This paper classifies R&D catering behavior into threshold crossing and tax planning type according to different motives,and identifies R&D catering behavior by combining R&D intensity threshold and abnormal R&D expenditure.In addition,we construct a signaling game model to investigate the behavioral choices of enterprises and government in policy implementation and explore the formation mechanism of R&D catering behavior.Next,the theoretical framework of R&D catering behavior under financing constraint and tax avoidance motives are developed to test whether financing constraint and tax avoidance motives create distorted incentives for firms to choose R&D catering behavior,respectively.The findings show that some enterprises have adopted R&D “window dressing” in order to alleviate the financing constraint,thus making the financing constraint create distorted incentives for innovation decision,and the distorted incentives of exogenous financing constraint are more obvious.Some enterprises also participate in innovation by tax planning in order to relieve the tax pressure.Moreover,the higher the tax burden pressure,i.e.,the stronger the tax avoidance incentive,the higher the probability of participating in tax planning catering behavior.Once more,based on the theoretical analysis framework of R&D catering behavior affecting firms’ innovation performance,we analyze and test the effect of different motivated R&D catering behavior on firms’ innovation performance.The results of the study show that,due to organizational innocence and catering inertia,R&D catering behavior that are solely for the purpose of packaging themselves only promote strategic innovation performance,and do not show a significant effect on substantive innovation performance.The regression results distinguishing between different motivational catering behaviors indicate that tax planning catering only positively to motivate strategic innovation performance,while threshold crossing catering behavior even inhibits substantive innovation performance.In addition,firms that engage in innovation with R&D catering behavior show a decreasing trend in profitability and market recognition,and the negative effect is more pronounced for firms that adopt tax planning catering behavior.Then,Since firms are embedded in specific institutional environments,and during economic transitions,informal institutions are embedded in firms’ economic activities as effective substitutes for formal institutions and jointly influence firms’ strategies and performance.Political connections,as an important form of informal institutional embedding,is an important contextual factor influencing firms’ R&D catering behavior decisions and their innovation performance.Based on the theoretical mechanism of political connections and R&D catering behavior and the moderating effect of political connections,we explore the possible substitution or complementary relationship between political connections and R&D catering behavior,and examine the moderating effect of political connections on innovation performance of R&D catering behavior.The findings show that due to the scarcity of resources such as financing,government subsidies and tax incentives,political connections reduces firms’ incentives to engage in R&D catering behavior,especially the incidence of tax planning catering behavior.Further,political connections positively moderates the effect of R&D catering behavior on innovation performance.Once again,comprehensive analysis of the policy effects of the Identification Measures,as well as analysis of the impact of R&D catering behavior on the policy effects.The findings of the study indicate that both substantive and strategic innovation performance are improved after obtaining high-tech enterprise recognition,but the improvement effect of strategic innovation performance is more obvious.This may be attributed to the fact that on the one hand,the presence of threshold crossing type enterprises weakened the innovation incentive effect of the policy,and on the other hand,the presence of tax planning type enterprises distorted the innovation incentive effect of the policy.Finally,based on the above findings,the policy recommendations are proposed to improve the effectiveness of the policy.Firstly,it is necessary to deepen the reform of the tax incentive policy and alleviate the pressure of innovation funds,so as to reduce the motivation of enterprises to participate in R&D catering behavior.Secondly,we should improve the incentive and constraint mechanism of high-tech enterprise recognition policy,strengthen the follow-up supervision to increase the cost of non-compliance,and revise the recognition conditions and scoring standards to better guide enterprises to improve their independent innovation capability.Thirdly,we should cultivate an effective implementation environment for the high-tech enterprise recognition policy,i.e.,provide an environmental guarantee for the effective implementation of the policy by building a new type of government-enterprise relationship and strengthening intellectual property rights protection. |
