Keywords: equipment manufacturing industry; Trade associations; * * * products; innovation in science and technology
1 Introduction
Equipment manufacturing industry is an industry that manufactures all kinds of technical equipment to meet the development needs of various departments of the national economy and occupies an important position in the national economic life. Vigorously developing equipment manufacturing industry is of special significance to China's economic development, the improvement of national comprehensive economic strength and the adjustment of national economic structure. China's equipment manufacturing industry has its own comparative advantages in the world market. With the new round of industrial transfer in the world, China has the opportunity to become a new world equipment manufacturing center. However, the technological innovation ability of China's equipment manufacturing industry is so poor that there is a big gap between China's equipment manufacturing industry and other equipment manufacturing giants in the world, that is, the labor productivity and industrial added value rate are low; Low-level overcapacity and high-level overcapacity; Weak technological innovation ability and lack of independent intellectual property rights.
In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to integrate the existing production capacity of enterprises and the scientific research capacity of scientific research units in China, promote the information exchange between production departments and scientific research departments, and provide scientific and technological information consulting services and public products and services. And provided by the third department. The third sector, also known as non-profit organizations, refers to organizations or departments other than government departments and profit-making market departments. One of the important third sectors related to equipment manufacturing industry is the Equipment Manufacturing Association.
2 scientific and technological information consulting services, public product attribute analysis
We design such a scientific and technological information consulting service, which is provided by an organization, which may be founded by the government, industry associations or enterprises. By continuously collecting the demand information of enterprises for scientific and technological product innovation and paying attention to the scientific research activities of scientific research departments and the supply information of new scientific and technological achievements, we can not only promote the cooperation between the two sides in the research and development of new technologies, but also promote the industrialization of scientific and technological achievements.
As a public product, scientific and technological information consulting service has obvious characteristics.
First of all, the utility of this service is inseparable. If this service is provided by the government, because the operating cost of the government is shared by all members of society, as long as the government produces this service, it must provide this service for all members of society. If this product is provided by a trade association, the situation is the same, except that the scope of this "collective" is smaller and it is a collection of member enterprises.
Second, this service is non-competitive. Because once the information consulting service comes into being, because of the reusability and extensive benefit of information, one more enterprise will not reduce the consumption of this service by other enterprises, and most of the information collected that is useless to one enterprise can be applied to other enterprises. This shows that its marginal cost is zero.
Third, the benefits of this service are non-exclusive. The so-called non-exclusivity means that once the product is provided, it is impossible to exclude anyone from paying for it (at least from the perspective of reasonable cost). Because if an enterprise does not share the cost of this service, it will be excluded from this service, and this service can really provide it with useful information, then excluding this enterprise from providing this service is likely to make it lose an opportunity for scientific and technological innovation without improving its labor productivity or added value of products, thus making society lose the opportunity to obtain huge benefits, which is to exclude the opportunity cost of this enterprise. So from this perspective, this service is non-exclusive.
3 Efficiency analysis of different suppliers of public goods
Samuelson's optimal supply model of public goods assumes that there is an omnipotent planner who knows the price that everyone is willing to pay for consuming public goods. Then feed these prices back to the master plan and calculate the combination of various public goods in the whole economy. In an economy with only public goods and a few consumers, everyone may have to bear a considerable part of the cost of producing public goods. With the expansion of the group size, the cost borne by an individual for public goods is much reduced, so that even if he does not contribute, the supply of public goods will not be reduced. For public goods, there are more individuals, and the motivation of individuals to distort preferences is stronger than when there are fewer people.
Now analyze a government policy. Suppose the government decides to set up a department to provide information intermediary services for enterprises and scientific research units. All expenses of the new department are borne by the enterprise. Suppose that the enterprise pays a certain proportion of the annual output value P for the department to bear the operating cost of the department. The government is faced with two types of enterprises, one has a greater preference for services provided by departments, such as equipment manufacturing, and the other has a lesser preference for services provided by departments, such as clothing industry.
The initial thinking of the government is to determine the P value of different types of enterprises according to the different needs of different enterprises with two preferences, and determine the supply of public goods Q* *, and then determine P 1 and P 20 according to different demand curves after Q* is determined. For enterprises with large preferences, P is larger, while for enterprises with small preferences, P is smaller. At this point, the supply of public goods has reached Pareto optimality.
But in fact, the enterprises in D 1 may have the consideration that because the cost of public goods is borne by a large number of enterprises and their share is very small, their own decisions will not affect the supply level of public goods. Therefore, if you hide your preferences and pretend to be a D2 enterprise, you will enjoy the same level of public goods, and your cost will be reduced, that is, from the original P 1 to P20.
In this case, as shown in figure 1, the demand curve D 1 will be deflected into D 1, and aggregate demand curve d will also be deflected into D'. At this time, the level of public goods that the department is willing to provide is Q', which reduces the supply level of Q, deviates from the optimal result in the real situation, and causes the efficiency waste of triangular ABC. In extreme cases, all enterprises may hide their true preferences and pretend that they are not interested in the scientific and technological consulting services provided by the department, thinking that other enterprises will bear the cost of the company's products and enjoy the benefits themselves. At this time, the total demand line becomes a zero-crossing vertical line and intersects S on the P axis. At this time, the supply of public goods is zero, which means that the government's plan cannot be implemented at all.
After this attempt failed, the government decided to determine the same P-axis for all enterprises without considering the preference distinction of enterprises. At this time, the situation is as shown in Figure 2.
Suppose the government decides that the supply level of public goods is Q*, and the cost to be shared by the two types of enterprises is strictly between P 1 and P2. At this time, the government service is point C. For D 1 enterprise, the area of efficiency loss caused by insufficient supply level is DCE, while for D2 enterprise, the waste caused by the supply of public goods is higher than its demand, and the corresponding area of efficiency loss is ABC.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that if the government provides a public product, it will either face an embarrassing situation that it cannot be implemented or there is a waste of efficiency.
If the government changes its strategy, it will hand over the supply function of providing scientific and technological information consulting services for enterprises to industry associations. Assumptions: ① Trade associations can truly reflect the preferences of member enterprises and honestly provide public products for member enterprises; (2) There are enough trade associations to provide diversified supply levels of public goods; ③ Enterprises can choose appropriate trade associations and join them according to their own preferences.
As shown in Figure 3, where D 1 and D2 are the demand curves of two types of enterprises respectively, and S is the supply curve of this public product. D 1 and D2 enterprises join two different trade associations respectively. At this time, these two trade associations set different P 1 and P2 according to the demand curves of these enterprises, and provide different levels of public goods Q 1. At this point, Q2 economy has reached Pareto optimality, and there is no problem of efficiency waste.
From Figure 3, we find that if two trade associations provide homogeneous public goods, the low-level public goods provided by the trade association of enterprise D2 are repeated investments in the public goods provided by the trade association of enterprise D/KLOC-0, resulting in a waste of resources. This shows that if two trade associations provide homogeneous products, there will still be efficiency losses, but in fact, the products they provide are often not completely homogeneous, because enterprises should not only consider whether the cost they want to share and the supply level of public products meet their preferences, but also consider whether the variety combination of such products meets their preferences. The choice of enterprises is to integrate this point. Compared with the government, trade associations are closer to member enterprises and have a better understanding of the effectiveness and needs of member enterprises; At the same time, different enterprises can exert influence on trade associations with different varieties and quantities of public goods or services, so as to better serve the member enterprises with diversified public product portfolios. It can be seen that the more diversified supply of public goods is also a place where trade associations have more advantages than the government.
4 Conclusions and policy recommendations
It is urgent to promote the development of China's equipment manufacturing industry, improve the technological innovation ability of equipment manufacturing industry and integrate the existing production capacity and scientific research capacity. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an intermediary between the production department and the scientific research department to provide scientific and technological information consultation, which is obviously superior to the government in efficiency.
To sum up, we can find that one of the necessary conditions for giving full play to the efficiency advantage of trade associations in distributing public goods is that trade associations can truly reflect the preferences of member enterprises and honestly provide public goods for member enterprises. It is more efficient for trade associations to provide scientific and technological information consultation for public products.
Another necessary condition for giving full play to the advantages of trade associations is that there are enough trade associations to provide diversified product combinations and supply levels. This requires the government to introduce market competition mechanism into trade associations, not to set too many restrictions on the establishment of trade associations, such as geography, industry and quantity, which are not conducive to inducing competition mechanism, to break the monopoly position of trade associations in providing public goods, so that different trade associations can survive and develop in the competition, and the market can choose appropriate trade associations to provide public goods for different target enterprises.
The third necessary condition to play the role of trade associations is that enterprises can freely choose suitable trade associations and join them according to their own preferences. Improve the property right system of each enterprise in the equipment manufacturing industry, so that each enterprise can truly become the market subject pursuing the maximization of enterprise interests. Only in this way can enterprises have a clear preference for their own interests, establish and choose trade associations spontaneously, and promote the innovation of trade associations, so as to better provide public products for themselves. Moreover, only after enterprises have a clear preference for public products will trade associations provide public products more efficiently according to this demand.