Replication Data for: Nurturing National Champions? Local Content in Solar Auctions and Firm Innovation

Replication Data and code for: \"Nurturing National Champions? Local Content in Solar Auctions and Firm Innovation\". The code can also be loaded directly from Github: Rather than by an invisible hand, many industries are kick-started by a government policy. Despite little robust evidence, local content requirements are increasingly used to incentivize domestic manufacturing if imports are cheaper. To examine the effect of local content, we explore an unintended quasi-policy-experiment. Starting in 2013, the Indian government simultaneously held solar auctions with and without local content, providing an otherwise unobserved counterfactual. We digitize the results from the 41 auctions worth 8.65 billion USD in solar module demand and collect annual revenue and solar patents of the 113 participating firms between 2004-2020. For causal identification, we compare winners of local content with similar open auction winners in a staggered difference-in-difference estimation. While we observe an insignificant increase in the same and the following year after firms win LCR auctions, overall, we find winning local content auctions does not significantly increase firms' solar patents or sales. We identify three reasons why the policy did not create stronger, lasting effects. First, local content did not create sufficient production to enable learning by doing. Second, local content did not generate enough revenue for re-investment into R&D. Third, local content reduced competition in auctions. The analysis underlines the predicament countries face as open auction winners, despite having won 9 times as much capacity, do not patent much (more).

《培育国家冠军企业？太阳能光伏招标中的本土内容要求与企业创新》一文的复现数据与代码。本研究代码亦可直接从GitHub获取：许多行业并非由"看不见的手"主导，而是由政府政策催生的。尽管相关稳健实证证据尚且不足，但在进口产品价格更低的场景下，各国愈发倾向于使用本土内容要求（Local Content Requirements, LCR）来激励本土制造业发展。为探究本土内容要求的政策效应，本研究依托一项意外形成的准自然实验展开分析。2013年起，印度政府同步开展了包含本土内容要求与不包含该要求的太阳能光伏招标，由此提供了原本难以观测的反事实场景。本研究完成了41宗太阳能光伏招标的数字化整理，相关招标总规模达86.5亿美元，涉及太阳能组件需求；同时收集了2004至2020年间113家参与投标企业的年度营收与太阳能专利数据。为实现因果识别，本研究采用渐进双重差分模型，将中标LCR招标的企业与资质相似的公开招标中标企业进行对比分析。尽管在企业中标LCR招标的当年及次年，我们观测到企业创新与营收存在不显著的提升，但整体而言，中标本土内容要求招标并未显著提升企业的太阳能专利数量或营收规模。本研究分析了该政策未能产生更强持久效应的三点原因：其一，本土内容要求未能催生足够的产能以实现"干中学"效应；其二，本土内容要求未能为企业带来充足营收以支撑研发再投入；其三，本土内容要求削弱了招标市场的竞争程度。本研究的分析凸显了各国面临的两难困境：尽管公开招标中标企业斩获的光伏装机容量是本土内容要求招标中标企业的9倍之多，但这类企业的专利申请量却并未实现显著提升。