| In recent years,equity pledge has become an important means of external financing for the controlling shareholders of listed companies,which not only brings financing convenience to enterprises,but also produces a series of economic consequences.At the same time,economic policy uncertainty has a huge impact on micro individual behavior,including on corporate innovation.Many scholars at home and abroad have studied this,but there is no consensus on whether the equity pledge of controlling shareholders and the uncertainty of economic policies inhibit or promote corporate R&D investment.Few studies have also noted the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty on the relationship between equity pledge of controlling shareholders and R&D investment of enterprises.With this in mind,this article examines it.Based on the data of listed companies in China from 2007 to 2021,this paper empirically studies the impact of equity pledge and economic policy uncertainty on the R&D investment of the controlling shareholders of listed companies,and the moderating effect of economic policy uncertainty on the equity pledge of controlling shareholders on the R&D investment of enterprises.By introducing two intermediary variables,capital occupation and financing constraint,this paper hopes to explore and verify the specific mechanism of the relationship between the above three.It is found that: first,the equity pledge of the controlling shareholder will significantly inhibit the R&D investment of the enterprise,and this inhibition effect is sustainable,and the inhibitory effect of the equity pledge of the controlling shareholder on the R&D investment of the enterprise mainly has two paths:aggravating the capital occupation of the company by the major shareholder and aggravating the financing constraint.Second,economic policy uncertainty will promote enterprises’ R&D investment,and financing constraints are one of the mechanisms;Third,economic policy uncertainty alleviates the inhibitory effect of equity pledge of controlling shareholders on the R&D investment of listed companies.The enlightenment of this article is that the controlling shareholders of listed companies should actively disclose relevant information on equity pledge to reduce the negative impact of equity pledge on the listed company;Relevant departments should strengthen supervision over the pledge of equity by controlling shareholders of enterprises and reduce their damage to the interests of enterprises and other small and medium-sized shareholders;When economic policy uncertainty increases,enterprises should increase investment in R&D and improve their competitiveness to cope with uncertainty. |
