Politicians' Tenure,Promotion Pressure And Regional Innovation Performance

Since entering a new phase different from the past called "new normal" of the economy,China's economic growth has continued to slow down.The economic development model driven by traditional investment is no longer suitable for China's economic development.In order to find new economic development momentum,China has gradually turned its attention to technological innovation.In the new stage of innovation-driven development,based on the goal of building an innovative country,combined with China's institutional background and realistic constraints,local governments,as the link between the central government and enterprises,play a role in promoting the formulation of national strategies into corporate innovation drivers.Based on the government agency theory,it is difficult for the central government to directly monitor the behavior of many economic entities.To achieve sustained and rapid development of the overall economy,the local government is entrusted to manage,supervise and motivate the economic entities in the precinct.As the major decision maker of local governments,local officials' personal traits and value orientation can often influence government decision-making,which may have an impact on regional innovation output and innovation efficiency.At present,there are studies on some of the influencing factors of regional innovation performance,but mainly from the aspects of regional resource endowment,economic environment,etc.There is few research on the personal characteristics and promotion incentives of local party and government officials.According to the above analysis,there are two important issues,the first is how the central government to assess and motivate local officials to complete the innovative strategic goals,and the second is whether local officials' decision-making based on personal promotion actually improves regional innovation output and innovation efficiency.In 2013,the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee promulgated the “Notice on Improving the Performance Assessment of Local Party and Government Leading Groups and Leading Cadres”,proposing to “improve the performance evaluation indicators” and “pay more attention to technological innovation,education and culture,employment,residents' income,social security,and the assessment of the people's health status,which have provided a good exogenous impact and research perspective for the study.Improvements in performance evaluation may make local officials more effective in promoting innovation performance,reducing central agency issues,and thus promoting regional innovation vitality and level.While considering the total amount of innovation output,the quality and the efficiency of innovation cannot be ignored.The mismatch between the quantity and quality of patent output in China is very prominent: by analyzing China's innovation patents based on China Patent Database,the results show that the total number of patent applications between 2011 and 2016 has grown rapidly,but the proportion of invention patent applications in China is less than 30%,and the authorized amount is less than 15% of the total amount.In view of the fact,China's patent output is mainly based on new practical patents and design patents,and the number of applications for invention patent with a high degree of originality is still at a low level.In terms of innovation technology efficiency,the average innovation efficiency in all regions of China is 47%,and the lowest figure is only 18%(Inner Mongolia).The technical efficiency is still at a low level,too.Based on the current research,this paper uses the provincial panel data to consider the impact of the promotion pressure,the official tenure and their interactions on regional innovation performance comprehensively,and the following are conclusions:1.By using the difference-in-differences model to regress regional innovation output and official promotion pressure,the results show that under the new performance evaluation system,the promotion pressure of officials is conducive to the growth of regional innovation output,but there is no significant improvement in the quality of innovation.On the one hand,after the promulgation of the new performance evaluation method,the impact of promotion pressure on the total number of patent applications and the total number of patent grants is more positive;on the other hand,the new method of performance evaluation does not enhance the association between promotion pressure and more invention patents.The above conclusions are tested by using alternative dependent variables,counterfactual tests,etc.,and the same conclusions are obtained.2.Through the technology of Web Crawler and manual collection of all innovation-related local government documents,this paper uses text analysis and gets the five major categories measures(21 pieces in total)to promote innovation,including financial measures,fiscal and tax measures,other economic measures,administrative measures and personnel measures.Furthermore,through the establishment of empirical models,it is found that after the promulgation of the new performance evaluation method,the promotion pressure has a more positive and significant impact on the turnover of the technology market and the growth of high-tech enterprises,which are beneficial to basic scientific research and enterprise R&D input.These factors have a positive effect and can partly explain the growth of regional innovation output.Therefore,it is reasonable to believe that the enhancement of the total amount of innovation output in the region by promotion pressure may be generated by actively expanding the scale of the technology market,improving the efficiency of government approval,and promoting the development of high-tech industries.3.The DEA-Malmquist index model is used to measure the regional innovation efficiency.The difference-in-differences model is used to empirically test the relationship between promotion pressure and innovation efficiency estimated before.It is found that the promotion pressure under the new assessment system has significantly promoted regional innovation efficiency,and the results pass the robustness test.4.Through the multiple linear regression models,the results show that no matter the official tenure or the joint item of the official tenure and promotion pressure,has no significant impact on the regional innovation output.5.Through the Tobit models,this paper tests the relationship between official tenure and regional innovation efficiency and the joint influence of official tenure and promotion pressure on regional innovation efficiency.Although the official tenure has no significant effect on regional innovation efficiency,the term of the official has a negative adjusted effect on the innovation efficiency affected by the promotion pressure.That is,as the term of the official decreases,the promotion pressure promotes the regional innovation efficiency more significantly.Based on the previous studies,this paper enriches the research on the term of local officials,the promotion pressure and regional innovation performance.From the theoretical aspects,this paper not only finds the impact of local officials' features on innovation performance,but also finds ways to improve regional innovation performance(expanding the scale of relevant markets and improving government administrative efficiency,etc.)through the analysis of the relationship between local officials' tenure,promotion pressure,bank credit situation,IPO situation,local government R&D expenditure,high-tech enterprise situation,technology market scale and regional innovation performance.In terms of practical aspects,this paper seeks factors affecting regional innovation performance at the level of local officials,and provides a reference for stimulating the innovation vitality of local enterprises,improving the level of innovation,and ultimately building the innovative country.Secondly,on the basis of analyzing the rationality and effectiveness of the existing local officials' promotion assessment system,it explores the incentive mechanism for local officials to make them more conducive to improving innovation output and innovation efficiency.There is still a lot of space to improve about this paper.First,although this paper proposes possible channels for how official promotion pressure improves regional innovation output,innovation policy has a certain synergy effect,in addition to its impact on innovation output alone.The synergy effect may also have a significant impact on regional innovation.Due to time constraints,this paper fails to analyze the synergies between different policies.Second,the role of economic indicators in the promotion of city and county officials may be more important than the role played on provincial officials in promotion.Therefore,city-level panel data can be used for further analysis to enhance the credibility of the conclusions.This paper believes that it can be further explored from the above two aspects in the future.