Employee Stock Ownership Plan,Information Disclosure Quality And Enterprise Innovation

Although the Chinese economy has entered a stage of high-quality development,the COVID-19 pandemic is still ravaging the world,and the international and domestic economic situation is still facing great uncertainties.Innovation,on the other hand,will be the key to solving the problem of development power and play an important role in promoting high-quality development.The 14 th Five-Year Plan proposes to strengthen scientific and technological innovation,enhance the leading position of enterprises in innovation,stimulate the creativity of talents,and make talents become the most important resource.How to improve the independent innovation ability of enterprises has become a common research problem in both theoretical and practical circles.Employee Stock Ownership Plan(ESOP)is a new type of equity incentive method,which can stimulate the enthusiasm and creativity of employees,alleviate agency problems and improve the innovation ability of enterprises.It has been favored by many foreign companies.Although the China Securities Regulatory Commission issued a document in 2014 allowing listed companies to implement employee stock ownership plans,implementation has not been satisfactory.In addition,corporate innovation activities require large amounts of financial support,and information asymmetry in the capital market requires a certain cost for companies to obtain funds.and information asymmetry in the capital market requires a certain cost for companies to obtain funds.In the existing studies,some scholars have paid attention to the role of both ESOP and information disclosure quality in promoting enterprise innovation.Talent and capital are two essential elements of innovation.Will they affect enterprise innovation together?This paper selects a-share listed companies in Shenzhen Stock Exchange from2014 to 2020 as research samples,selects the number of patents as an important index to evaluate enterprise innovation,and adopts the method of propensity score matching(PSM)to investigate the relationship between employee stock ownership plan,information disclosure quality and enterprise innovation.The results show that :(1)the implementation of ESOP significantly promotes enterprise innovation;(2)There is a significant positive relationship between the quality of information disclosure and enterprise innovation;(3)There is a substitution effect between ESOP and information disclosure quality in enterprise innovation.When one factor exists,the space of the other factor will be squeezed.Further research shows that ESOP is more effective in promoting enterprise innovation in non-state-owned enterprises and enterprises in which the employee subscription ratio is larger than that of senior executives.After the endogeneity problem was solved and the robustness test was carried out,the conclusion of this paper remained unchanged.The research of this paper can not only make listed companies better understand the unique role of ESOP system on enterprise innovation,but also make enterprises realize the importance of information disclosure quality for company development,provide theoretical support for the government to improve relevant policies,and promote the healthy and orderly development of capital market.