The Revision of Antitrust Law and Corporate Innovation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62051/mcz4da41Keywords:
Antitrust Law; Financing Constraints; Market Competition; Corporate Innovation.Abstract
As China's economy transitions to a stage of high-quality development, strengthening antitrust measures has become a core task for improving competition policy. However, its impact mechanism and effect on micro-level corporate innovation remain unclear. Using a sample of A-share listed companies on the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2018 to 2024, and employing the implementation of the newly revised Antitrust Law in 2022 as a quasi-natural experiment, this study systematically examines the impact of antitrust policy on corporate innovation level and innovation quality using a Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach. The findings show that the new Antitrust Law significantly suppresses both the total innovation output and the proportion of exploratory innovation among firms with high market power. This conclusion remains robust after a series of tests, including parallel trend tests, placebo tests, and PSM-DID analysis. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the aforementioned inhibitory effect is more complex in coastal regions and high-tech industries: the suppression of total innovation is stronger, but the relative suppression of exploratory innovation is weaker. Mechanism analysis indicates that the law compresses firms' innovation resource space through two pathways: exacerbating financing constraints and intensifying market competition. These results are consistent with the theoretical expectation that antitrust law inhibits innovation by strengthening resource constraints and risk-bearing pressure. This study provides micro-level evidence for evaluating the economic consequences of antitrust law revisions and offers important insights for refining competition policy design and stimulating market innovation vitality.
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