M&A goodwill and corporate technological innovation: The mediating moderating effect of stock pledges.

Identifying whether and how merger and acquisition (M&A) goodwill influences corporate technology innovation is a critical topic in the context of growing M&A activities. Based on the panel data of 2,634 Chinese non-financial listed companies from 2007 to 2019, this paper adopts multiple linear regression and the Bootstrap method to investigate the impact of M&A goodwill on corporate technological innovation and the mechanism through which M&A goodwill affects technological innovation. The results show that: (1) There is a significant negative correlation between M&A goodwill and technological innovation input, with financial constraints acting as the main channels. (2) Non-private corporations enjoy a higher level of financing capacity in terms of debt and equity compared with private corporations, resulting in the absence of the disincentive effect of M&A goodwill on corporate technological innovation inputs, despite the fact that M&A activities also cause massive resource consumption. (3) Stock pledges by controlling shareholders are effective in alleviating the negative impact of M&A goodwill on technological innovation inputs. Furthermore, our results highlight that simple stock pledge measures capture a significant influence of alleviating financing constraints, thereby decreasing the adverse impact of M&A, and hence need to be adequately considered in future M&A and innovation studies. While enriching the literature on the economic consequences of M&A and the research on stock pledge, this paper also provides micro-evidence for an in-depth understanding of the effect of M&A goodwill on technological innovation.

Does the Environmental Regulation Intensity and ESG Performance Have a Substitution Effect on the Impact of Enterprise Green Innovation: Evidence from China.

Against the background of green and sustainable development strategy, it is an effective way to carry out green innovation to cope with the increasing intensity of government environmental regulation for enterprises. Nevertheless, the regulatory role of ESG performance has been ignored. Based on panel data from Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2019, this paper mainly studies whether the environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance have a substitution effect on the impact of green innovation by constructing a double fixed effect model. The empirical results showed that first, positive ESG performance is conducive to promoting green innovation. Second, there is a U-shaped relationship between the intensity of environmental regulation and high-quality green innovation, which reflects the effect of "offset before compensation". With the increasing intensity of environmental regulation, high-quality green innovation tends to crowd out low-quality green innovation, which further improves the practical test of the "Porter Hypothesis". Third, the positive ESG performance showed a negative regulatory effect between environmental regulation intensity and enterprise green innovation, which means that environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance have a substitution effect, and the effect is heterogeneous in different enterprises. This paper makes a beneficial exploration on how environmental regulation intensity and ESG performance affect enterprise green innovation, and demonstrates the regulatory role of ESG performance between environmental regulation intensity and green innovation, which reveals the impact of macro environmental policies on the green innovation behavior of micro subjects, and contributes to the further improvement of ESG concept and green innovation theory.

The effective path of green transformation of heavily polluting enterprises promoted by green merger and acquisition-qualitative comparative analysis based on fuzzy sets.

Green merger and acquisition (GMA) is becoming a growing tendency for heavily polluting enterprises in recent years; however, the realization path of green transformation through GMA is still unexplored. Taking 48 Chinese heavily polluting enterprises that had GMA in 2018 as the research object, this paper constructs the "M&A attributes, Organizational characteristics, and External environment" (M-O-E) framework, by using the method of fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to reveal the configurations of conditions that lead to high levels of green innovation performance. The results show that the high green technology innovation performance after GMA of heavily polluting enterprises is the outcome of multiple antecedents, and no singular antecedent is sufficient for achieving it. Besides, there are three equivalent configurations of conditions to achieve green transformation: professional buyer, internal leading, and internal-external linkage. Among them, the professional buyer configuration highlights that the combination of M&A experience and M&A scale is of great importance, the internal leading configuration emphasizes that the existence of environmental awareness and organizational resources is the core conditions, and the internal-external linkage configuration requires simultaneous efforts of M&A experience and government environmental regulations. Our research contributes to the understanding of green transformation in heavily polluting enterprises from a configurational perspective, and provides a practice-oriented guide to achieve green transformation for the government and heavily polluting enterprises.

Impact of Monetary Policy Uncertainty on R&D Investment Smoothing Behavior of Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Enterprises: Empirical Research Based on a Threshold Regression Model.

R&D investment is the source of technological innovation of pharmaceutical enterprises, but it will be restricted by the funding level, especially in the context of major public health emergencies occurring more frequently, therefore exploring the impact of monetary policy uncertainty on the R&D investment smoothing behavior of pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises has important theoretical and practical value. Based on the relevant data of Chinese pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises from 2012 to 2018, this paper studies the impact of monetary policy uncertainty on R&D investment smoothing behavior of pharmaceutical enterprises, and investigates whether there is a threshold effect. First, our results demonstrate that the empirical test results of this article support the hypothesis of R&D investment smoothing behavior of pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises. Second, there is a negative correlation between monetary policy uncertainty and R&D investment smoothing behavior, and the shorter the period is, the higher the financing constraints of pharmaceutical enterprises are, and the more obvious the negative correlation is. Third, financing constraints have a single threshold effect on the R&D investment smoothing behavior of pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises, with a threshold of -13.7693. Moreover, this conclusion can better promote the virtuous circle of the real economy of financial and pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises. It is recommended that pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises establish and improve the enterprise R&D reserve system, reduce the risk of R&D investment, play the role of R&D smoothing, and realize the sustainable development of enterprise R&D.

Economic Policy Uncertainty, Environmental Regulation, and Green Innovation-An Empirical Study Based on Chinese High-Tech Enterprises.

As the continuous changes in environmental regulations have a non-negligible impact on the innovation activities of micro subjects, and economic policy uncertainty has become one of the important influencing factors to be considered in the development of enterprises. Therefore, based on the panel data of Chinese high-tech enterprises from 2012-2017, this paper explores the impact of heterogeneous environmental regulations on firms' green innovation from the perspective of economic policy uncertainty as a moderating variable. The empirical results show that, first, market-incentivized environmental regulation instruments have an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation output, while voluntary environmental regulation produces a significant positive impact. Second, the U-shaped relationship between market-based environmental regulation and innovation output becomes more pronounced when economic policy uncertainty is high. However, it plays a negative moderating role in regulating the relationship between voluntary-based environmental regulation and innovation output. This paper not only illustrates the process of technological innovation by revealing the intrinsic mechanism of environmental regulation on firm innovation, but also provides insights for government in environmental governance from the perspective of economic policy uncertainty as well.

The impact of heterogeneous environmental regulation on innovation of high-tech enterprises in China: mediating and interaction effect.

It is important for China's green innovation productivity and sustainable development to study the effect of heterogeneous environmental regulation on microenterprise innovation activities. Based on the panel data of high-tech enterprises in China from 2012 to 2017, the article studies the incentive effect of heterogeneous environmental regulation on technological innovation and the mediation of innovation input and explores whether different types of environmental regulations have interactive effects on enterprise innovation. The results reveal that compared with the command-controlled environmental regulation, the incentive effect of market-incentive environmental regulation and voluntary environmental regulation on enterprise innovation is more significant, where the innovation input fully plays its role as a mediating effect. Further research finds that there is an interactive effect between command-controlled environmental regulation and other two regulatory tools, but no interactive effect between market-incentive environmental regulation and voluntary environmental regulation, which shows that the control-based regulatory tools and more flexible regulatory tools have a complementary effect on enterprise innovation. Through revealing the internal mechanism of environmental regulation on enterprise innovation, the article displays the process of technological innovation, and it also finds that flexible regulation tools and the combination of rigid and flexible tools are more conducive to encourage enterprises to carry out innovation activities.

Economic policy choice of governing haze pollution: evidence from global 74 countries.

Haze pollution not only has a huge impact on economic development but also seriously damages the health of residents, which has attracted the attention of many countries and scholars. The geographical detector model and the panel quantile regression model are used in combination to analyze the socio-economic driving factors of haze pollution from 2010 to 2015 for 74 significantly representative countries. The main results are as follows: (1) Industrial structure is the main factor affecting the haze concentration, followed by economic growth and research and development (R&D) intensity. (2) Government influence and industrial structure will significantly aggravate haze pollution, whereas the energy intensity and economic growth have an inhibitory effect on haze concentration. Countries with severe haze pollution should focus on upgrading their industrial structure and avoiding energy rebound. (3) Urbanization, foreign investment, and R&D intensity have different effects on the haze concentration among countries with different pollution levels. Specifically, the relationship between economic growth and pollution is inverted N-shaped in countries with medium haze concentration, whereas in other countries, it is positive N-shaped. Countries should actively leverage the agglomeration effect of high-density urban populations and focus on the introduction of high-quality foreign capital.

How does vertical integration promote innovation corporate social responsibility (ICSR) in the coal industry? A multiple-step multiple mediator model.

This paper aims to demonstrate the impact of coal enterprises' vertical integration on the performance of innovation corporate social responsibility (ICSR) and to elaborate its specific transmission path through financing structure and market power. This paper takes the data of A-share listed coal company from 2008 to 2017 as samples, uses input-output table method to measure the degree of vertical integration, and explores the relationship between the four factors through multiple linear regression and Bootstrap method. We found that: (1) the vertical integration of coal enterprises has positive incentives for the promotion of ICSR. (2) Financing structure and market power play a chain intermediary role in this process of incentive. (3) In areas with high marketization process, vertical integration has more significant incentive effect on ICSR. The paper extends the research on the relationship between vertical integration and innovation, which provides a reference for the improvement of China's supply-side reform and corporate social responsibility (CSR) fulfillment policy. It is helpful to promote the sustainable development of the coal industry, stimulate the innovation vitality of enterprises, and improve the fulfillment of CSR.

How Can We Improve the Transformation Success Rate of Research Results in the Pharmaceutical Industry? The Game Theoretic Model of Technology Transfer Subjects.

University-industry technology transfer (UITT) plays an important role in the construction of the national pharmaceutical innovation system. The speculations of a faculty inventor may hinder the successful transfer of pharmaceutical research results. This paper divides the specific process of the transformation of pharmaceutical research results into two parts: (1) an evolutionary game between faculty inventors and universities; and (2) a Stackelberg game between faculty inventors and pharmaceutical companies. Further, we carry out numerical simulations to analyze the impact of transformation success rate, income distribution coefficient, and a faculty inventor's future working years on the transformation of pharmaceutical research results. The findings indicated that whether a combination of action strategies of faculty inventors and universities can evolve to the optimal equilibrium is determined by many factors, such as the technological transaction price of the pharmaceutical company and the reward or the income obtained by the faculty inventor. The transformation success rate and the income distribution coefficient are the key factors that affect the faculty inventor's will and the behavior of the pharmaceutical company. The conclusions of this paper contribute to the research on how we can improve the success rate of research results and avoid resource waste, and provide a decision-making reference for the management of pharmaceutical research results in universities.