Local government debt and corporate R&D investment: Evidence from China

We collect the data to examine the crowding-out effect of local government debt on R&D investment of Chinese corporations. We find that there is a significant negative correlation between local government debt and corporate R&D investment, which indicate that corporations based in provinces with higher government debt are more reluctant to carry out innovation activities. Furthermore, our empirical results show that the crowding-out effect is more pronounced for firms with fewer financing constraints. We initially collect the data of Chinese A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges and provincial government debt for the years 2012-2017. We match firm data with provincial government debt based on location. Then, we exclude special treatment firms, financial enterprises and firms with missing data. Due to missing data of provincial government debt, we also exclude firms headquartered in Tibet autonomous region. Finally, we have a sample consists of 11417 firm-year observations representing 2483 listed companies in 30 provincial districts in mainland China including 22 provinces, 4 autonomous regions and 4 municipalities directly under the central government. Data analysis was performed with STATA software package.本研究通过采集数据，旨在考察地方政府债务对中国企业研发（R&D）投资的挤出效应。研究发现，地方政府债务与企业研发投资间存在显著负相关关系，即地处政府债务规模更高省份的企业，开展创新活动的意愿更低。进一步的实证结果表明，融资约束程度更低的企业，其面临的挤出效应更为显著。本研究最初采集了2012-2017年沪深证券交易所上市的中国A股公司，以及省级政府债务的相关数据；随后基于企业所在地，将企业数据与省级政府债务数据进行匹配。此后，剔除了特别处理（Special Treatment, ST）企业、金融类企业以及存在数据缺失的样本；由于西藏自治区的省级政府债务数据存在缺失，同时剔除了注册地位于西藏自治区的企业。最终得到的有效样本包含11417个公司年度观测值，涵盖中国大陆30个省级行政区内的2483家上市公司，其中包括22个省、4个自治区以及4个直辖市。本研究的数据分析工作均通过STATA统计软件包完成。