Economic Policy Uncertainty,Enterprise Innovation And TFP

The improvement of enterprises’ total factor productivity is the key for enterprises to gain a foothold in market competition,and also the driving force to promote the transformation of national economy.Since the 19 th National Congress of the CPC,China’s economy has been transforming from high-speed development to high-quality development,and is now in a period of changing from factor-driven and investment-driven development to innovation-driven development.To achieve the goal of building an innovation-oriented country in the new period,it is necessary to comprehensively enhance the level of total factor productivity of enterprises.In the face of external shocks such as the financial crisis,trade frictions and COVID-19,the Chinese government has issued a series of economic policies to stabilize the economy and aggravate the uncertainty of economic policies.However,enterprise productivity is extremely vulnerable to the impact of external environment.In this context,this paper studies the total factor productivity of Chinese enterprises from the perspective of macroeconomic policy uncertainty and company innovation.Taking the background of economic policy uncertainty as the research perspective,this paper selects the financial statements data of China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2010 to 2020 as samples,and combines the research results of relevant literatures at home and abroad to build a panel regression model to analyze the effect of economic policy uncertainty on total factor productivity of China’s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies,and uses the mediating effect model to study the mediating effect of macroeconomic policy uncertainty on total factor productivity of enterprises.In this paper,POLS model,fixed effect model and mediating effect model are selected to conduct regression analysis on sample data.The empirical results show that: first,the uncertainty of economic policy has a significant positive effect on total factor productivity of enterprises;second,the uncertainty of economic policy has a significant promoting effect on enterprises innovation,while the innovation of enterprises directly mediates the uncertainty of economic policy and total factor productivity of enterprises;third,the uncertainty of economic policy has a stronger promoting effect on total factor productivity of enterprises,whether in central enterprises or non-state-owned enterprises.Based on the theoretical analysis and empirical results,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations from the policy-makers and enterprise management: Policy-makers must balance the possible impact of economic policy uncertainties on various economic behaviors of companies when formulating relevant policies.Enterprises should step up innovation to improve both production capacity and research capabilities.