How to develop high-tech industries in countries with weak intellectual property protection?

Abstract: As we all know, the status of intellectual property protection in China is not good. According to the Intellectual Property Protection Index of Asian countries and regions published by Hong Kong Political and Economic Risk Consulting Company, China ranks second from the bottom among Asian countries and regions, only better than Indonesia. According to the legal index published by the World Bank, one of the components of the legal index is the status of intellectual property protection. China ranks 95th among 195 countries, which is lower than the world average. Theoretically, in areas where intellectual property protection is so weak, the willingness of enterprises to invest in R&D should be weak. Surprisingly, however, China is an out-and-out "R&D country"-according to the report of the World Economic Cooperation Organization, in 2006, the total R&D expenditure of enterprises in China ranked third in the world after the United States and Japan, and the growth rate of R&D expenditure of enterprises in China ranked first in the world from 2002 to 2006; According to the survey of the World Investment Report of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in 2005, China has surpassed all countries and regions and become the first choice for major multinational companies to invest in R&D in the world. In a country where intellectual property protection is so weak, how to realize the rapid development of high-tech industry? Are China enterprises different? Don't they need a strong intellectual property legal system to protect their advanced technology and innovative products? Or is there any other mechanism to support the activities of China enterprises in R&D instead of intellectual property protection? These are the two main questions to be answered in this paper. In order to answer the first question, we investigate whether the different enforcement of intellectual property protection in different provinces has affected the financing, R&D investment and R&D output of high-tech enterprises in different provinces through provincial comparative analysis. The results show that (1) in the provinces with strong enforcement of intellectual property protection, high-tech enterprises are more likely to obtain various external financing: external debt financing, debt financing of informal financial institutions and external equity financing, and are more willing to invest a larger proportion of funds in R&D activities and develop more patented technologies and new products. (2) Although our above results show that there is a positive correlation between the enforcement of intellectual property rights and the financing ability and R&D ability of high-tech enterprises, is there a factor that we ignore, which not only improves the level of intellectual property protection, but also improves the development level of high-tech enterprises, thus leading to a "pseudo-correlation" relationship between the level of intellectual property protection, high-tech borrowing ability and R&D ability? For this problem, if we explore the mechanism of intellectual property protection on high-tech borrowing ability and R&D ability, it is obvious that the relationship between them is causal rather than "pseudo-correlation". The author designs an empirical test and finds that intellectual property protection affects the investment and financing behavior of high-tech enterprises through the following three mechanisms: first, intellectual property protection reduces the "externality problem" that the company's technology is easily copied and stolen by competitors; Second, the protection of intellectual property rights reduces the "information asymmetry problem", that is, the company is unwilling to disclose information to external investors, so as to avoid the information of R&D projects being leaked, which leads to financing difficulties; Third, intellectual property protection can also reduce the "agency problem" of Sino-foreign joint ventures-Chinese shareholders are likely to use advanced technology provided by foreign shareholders for other purposes, which makes the latter reluctant to transfer technology to joint ventures. The above research results answer the first question of this paper: intellectual property protection plays a role in the investment and financing behavior of domestic high-tech enterprises. However, even though the overall level of intellectual property protection in China is still backward, it seems that foreign high-tech enterprises should not regard China as the first choice for R&D investment. Because unlike domestic enterprises, foreign-funded enterprises can choose to invest in R&D in other countries with strong intellectual property protection. Therefore, the author concludes that there may be other mechanisms to replace the protection of intellectual property rights and attract foreign high-tech enterprises to invest in R&D in China. We believe that social capital may be a very important alternative mechanism. The classic definition of social capital in economics comes from LLSV( 1997): "In a society, people tend to cooperate, that is, in a society with high social capital, people tend to maximize social efficiency through cooperation, rather than mutual suspicion and mutual calculation leading to the inefficiency of the' prisoner's dilemma'. Knack and Keefer( 1997) further emphasized that social capital includes social mutual trust, social morality and team spirit. LLSV( 1997) based on the data of the World Values Survey, it is found that China has a very high level of social capital and social mutual trust, ranking among the top 40 major developed countries and developing China countries in the world. Allen, Qian and Qian(2005) further pointed out that, unlike the West, China's high social mutual trust is mainly influenced by the mainstream culture of China for thousands of years-Confucian culture. Their further questionnaire survey of business owners in China also shows that 65,438+0,000% of business owners believe that any economic loss is not as important as credit and reputation loss if the enterprise goes bankrupt. It can be seen that in a relational society like China, keeping promises is highly valued. If a country's social capital is high and people's integrity and public morality are strong, then even if the intellectual property protection system is not perfect, people in that country are unlikely to infringe on the intellectual property rights of others, so social capital can be used as an important mechanism to attract foreign high-tech enterprises. In order to test this mechanism, we investigated the influence of the difference of social capital level in different provinces on the investment behavior of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises. Our main conclusions are as follows: (1) After controlling the economic development level, legal protection level, government integrity level, financial development level, same industry intensity, upstream and downstream industry intensity, infrastructure construction, salary level, human resource richness and policy preference of each province, it is easier for provinces with higher social capital to attract foreign high-tech enterprises. Moreover, in provinces with high social capital, foreign-funded high-tech enterprises are more willing to form joint ventures with local enterprises and have stronger willingness to invest in R&D. (2) In provinces with high social capital, the R&D intensity of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises is increasing year by year; On the contrary, in provinces with low social capital, the R&D intensity of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises is declining year by year. This result is consistent with our theoretical prediction, indicating that foreign-funded high-tech enterprises gradually understand local social capital, gradually accumulate experience, and gradually respond to the integrity of local people. These results answer the second question of this paper: in countries with weak intellectual property protection, social capital can play a role in replacing intellectual property protection. In addition, in order to understand the mechanism of social capital more clearly, we also investigated how the social capital and national culture of the country of origin of foreign investors affect the social capital effect of the investing country (China). We draw the following conclusions: (1) If foreign high-tech enterprises come from countries and regions with high social capital, they will pay more attention to the integrity of their partners and employees, so they will choose to invest in R&D in regions with high social capital. (2) If foreign-funded high-tech enterprises come from countries and regions with very different cultural backgrounds in China, foreign investors are very unfamiliar with China's investment environment due to cultural differences, so in order to reduce risks, they will also choose to invest in provinces with high social capital. (3) Investors from high-risk aversion countries and regions also rely on the social capital level of the investment areas to a greater extent. (4) Compared with foreign investors in other countries, the investment decisions of foreign investors with China blood are less dependent on the level of social capital in the investment areas, because they can use other mechanisms, such as the governance mechanism based on relationship and reputation, to deal with the dishonest behavior of local people. (5) It is still difficult for both sides who have been at war in history to forget hatred. The more countries and regions that have bad relations with China in history, the less willing investors are to establish joint ventures with China enterprises and engage in R&D activities in China. Every time the number of wars between these countries and China has increased since the Opium War, the probability of establishing joint ventures between investors of the two countries has decreased by 3.2%, and the R&D intensity of high-tech enterprises from these countries in China has decreased by 0.6%. These research results expand the research of the new field of "culture and finance" in many ways. The full text is divided into six chapters, and the main contents of each chapter are as follows: The first chapter is the introduction. This paper mainly introduces the research ideas and analysis framework of the paper. Specifically, it includes: research background, research problems, research ideas, research content, research improvement and innovation, etc. The second chapter is literature review and theoretical analysis. "Intellectual property protection and enterprise financing" and "social capital and enterprise financing" are interdisciplinary fields. At present, there is little literature in this field. Using the theories and methods of economics, finance and sociology, the author analyzes and expounds the mechanism of intellectual property protection and social capital on financial decisions of high-tech enterprises, such as financing, R&D investment, R&D output, investment region selection and equity structure selection. The third chapter analyzes the institutional background. First of all, it introduces the main existing laws and regulations on intellectual property rights in China, and the international conventions on intellectual property rights signed by the China government and relevant international organizations. Then we discussed the differences of intellectual property law enforcement in different provinces of China. Finally, we analyze the differences of social capital levels in different countries (regions) and provinces in China. The fourth chapter studies the influence of intellectual property protection on external financing, R&D investment and R&D output of high-tech enterprises in China, and specifically tests three mechanisms of intellectual property protection on investment and financing decision-making of high-tech enterprises. The fifth chapter studies the influence of social capital on the regional choice, ownership structure and R&D investment of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises, and then discusses how the social capital and national culture of the country of origin of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises affect the social capital effect of the investing country. The sixth chapter is a summary of the research results of this paper, including research conclusions and enlightenment. The main improvements and innovations of this study are as follows: first, how can countries with weak intellectual property protection develop high-tech industries? This is a common concern of governments, enterprises and academic circles all over the world. If we want to study this issue, I am afraid that the data of no country in the world can be more convincing than that of China, because China has poor intellectual property protection and rapid development of high-tech industries, and no country can match it. How to develop China's high-tech industry quickly and well under the condition of imperfect intellectual property protection system is a problem that puzzles the world and attracts worldwide attention. This paper makes a systematic study on this issue by using the database of all high-tech enterprises in China from 200/KLOC-0 to 2005 provided by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. It is the first time to analyze the influence of the implementation of intellectual property protection on external financing, R&D investment and R&D output of high-tech enterprises theoretically and empirically, and it is the first time to point out that social capital can be used as an alternative mechanism for intellectual property protection and play an important role in the investment region selection, equity structure and R&D investment of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises. The conclusion of this paper can not only provide decision-making basis for China government to formulate the development plan and system construction of high-tech industry in the next few decades, but also help other countries to understand and learn from China's successful experience in developing high-tech industry. Secondly, this paper is the first paper to introduce the implementation of intellectual property protection into the field of corporate finance research. Previous studies have mainly discussed the impact of different legal provisions on intellectual property protection in different countries on economic growth (Gould and Gruben, 1996), technological change (Moser, 2005) and foreign direct investment (Javorcik, 2004; Du et al., 2008). These studies do not involve the study of corporate finance, and the transnational research methods adopted by them can not examine the impact of the level of enforcement of intellectual property protection, because countries have different legal provisions and different levels of enforcement, and it is impossible to clearly distinguish them. We use inter-provincial research instead of transnational research, because different provinces in the same country only have differences in law enforcement, but not in legislation, which enables us to focus on the impact of law enforcement on corporate financial decisions. Thirdly, this paper puts forward that social capital can be used as an alternative mechanism for intellectual property protection for the first time, and takes the lead in applying the concept and principle of "social capital" to study the investment region, equity structure and R&D investment choice of foreign-funded high-tech enterprises. Although there have been many studies on the influence of social capital on economic growth (LLSV,1997; Knack and Keefer, 1997), financial development (Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, 2004a), stock market participation (Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, 2008a), bilateral trade and transnational investment (Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales, 2008b) and venture capital (Bottazzi, Da Rin and Hellmann, 2008), but this is the first time to introduce social capital into the new research field of ownership structure selection and R&D investment decision. Fourthly, this paper takes the lead in constructing various enforcement indicators of intellectual property protection. Previous studies mainly focused on whether a country has promulgated some laws and regulations aimed at protecting intellectual property rights, or signed some international conventions on intellectual property protection to score, thus constructing an intellectual property protection index (Park and Ginarte, 1997). However, this indicator only shows whether a country's intellectual property legal system is perfect, and it cannot be used to measure the enforcement of intellectual property protection. The law enforcement index of intellectual property protection constructed in this paper is expected to provide analytical tools and testing methods for the research of intellectual property protection law enforcement and economic and financial fields. Fifthly, this paper specifically analyzes the mechanism of law on enterprise financing, thus expanding the research in the field of "law and finance" to some extent. Since La Porta, Lopez-de-silians, Shleifer and Vishny began to study the field of "Law and Finance", although the research in this field has attracted much attention at present, researchers have never been able to clearly explain the economy in which macro-level legal protection affects micro-level corporate financing behavior. In order to solve this problem, this paper chooses a "special" law-intellectual property protection law, and selects high-tech industries closely related to this law, and puts forward, tests and proves that the law (intellectual property protection law) affects the financing behavior of enterprises (high-tech companies) through three major economic mechanisms: (1) reduces external problems; (2) reduce the degree of information asymmetry; (3) Reduce agency costs. Sixthly, this paper has also made some useful extensions to the new research field of "culture and finance". The author studies how the social culture of the country of origin of foreign investors affects their investment behavior in China. Among them, social culture includes: cultural differences, blood relationship, risk aversion, social capital, war history, language, geographical distance and many other aspects. Up to now, the research in the field of "culture and finance" is still in its infancy, with only a few scattered studies (see the summary of Guiso, Sapienza and Zingales(2006)), so any expansion in this field is conducive to attracting more and more interested people to conduct more in-depth discussions on the basis of predecessors. Seventh, this study participated in a great debate in academic circles, that is, the paradox of strong economic growth and obvious institutional defects in China. Allen, Qian and Qian's (2005) theory of law and economic development can hardly explain why China's legal system is not perfect, but its economy is developing rapidly. Therefore, they think that law is not necessary for economic development, and China's economic growth is due to the existence of some alternative governance mechanisms such as reputation mechanism and relationship mechanism. Ayyagari, demir guc- Quint and Maksimovic(2007) criticized Allen, Qian and Qian(2005) for exaggerating the role of reputation and relationship mechanism in China's economic development. Fan, Mok, Xu and Yang (2007) also criticized that China's economic growth is faster than that of developed countries only because the starting point of China's per capita GDP is relatively low, so there is a lot of room for growth. This paper supports and opposes the views of Allen, Qian and Qian(2005). Our inter-provincial research shows that law plays a role in China's economic growth, because it is necessary to strengthen the enforcement of intellectual property rights, which can promote the development of high-tech enterprises, but there is also an alternative mechanism of law-social capital can attract foreign high-tech enterprises to invest. These results mean that the development of a country or an industry can not be achieved overnight by copying the western legal system, and it is very important to attach importance to and strengthen the enforcement of laws, while factors outside the law, such as strengthening the construction of spiritual civilization, protecting and inheriting the Confucian honest culture left over from the 5,000-year history of civilization, and consolidating our social capital foundation, are equally crucial.