关键词: IPO审核过会, 企业创新, 竞争效应, 信号效应, 企业价值

Abstract:    The Report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed to improve the function of the capital market, increase the proportion of direct financing, and accelerate the implementation of innovation-driven development strategy. Innovation is the main driving force for enterprises to obtain competitive advantages and promote high-quality macroeconomic development. The capital market plays a major role in optimizing resource allocation, and the IPO market, as a key part of the capital market, is an important carrier to promote enterprise innovation and implement the innovation-driven development strategy. However, existing literatures, which investigates the relationship between IPO and enterprise innovation, all focus on the perspective of IPO enterprises themselves, either examining how IPO affects enterprise innovation or vice versa, but little literatures examine how IPOs affect the innovation behavior of peer incumbent enterprises from the perspective of spillover effect. Therefore, it is of great practical importance and necessity to investigate the role of the IPO market in promoting enterprise innovation and even implementing the innovation-driven development strategy from multiple perspectives, so as to boost the reform of the capital market.Based on the data of China′s A-share non-financial listed companies from 2005 to 2019, this paper empirically examined the impact of IPO approval on the innovation of peer incumbents and its economic consequences. The results showed that IPO approval will significantly increase the peer enterprises′ innovation input, and the more the number of IPO approval, the more obvious this effect. Further examination showed that, among the two effects brought about by IPO approval, competition effect plays a major role. Through heterogeneity tests, we found that the promotion effect of IPO approval on the innovation of peer enterprises is mainly reflected in the non-state-owned enterprises, when the larger the IPO scale to be raised, the higher the R&D investment before IPO and in the industries with a higher degree of competition. Consequently, IPO approval improves the innovation output quantity and quality of peer enterprises significantly, and mainly for substantial innovation, but not for strategic innovation, and it ultimately improves the marginal contribution of innovation output to enterprise value. This paper has the following marginal contributions. First, it has enriched the relevant literature on IPO spillover effect from the dual perspectives of competition effect and signal effect brought about by IPO approval, and used the empirical evidence of China′s capital market to respond to the view that information and competition are the root causes of peer effect. Second, it has expanded the relevant literature on the spillover effect of IPO approval from the perspective of R&D, which responds to the research on the spillover effect of IPO under the registration system scenario. Third, it has enriched the relevant literature on the influencing factors and economic consequences of enterprise innovation, and responded to the research on the impact of different innovation achievements on enterprise value. This paper may have some important policy implications. In terms of government decision-making: first, capital market plays a unique role in optimizing resource allocation. Thus, it is necessary to further promote the reform of the capital market, stimulate the vitality of market competition, and further improve the efficiency of resource allocation. Second, the capital market can exert spillover effect through competition effect and signal effect. It is necessary to continue to improve the functions of the capital market, encourage and support high-quality firms to go public, and give full play to the positive role of the capital market in implementing the innovation-driven strategy. Third, it is necessary to further break the institutional barriers that restrict product market competition, stimulate the crisis awareness of enterprises through market competition, promote their endogenous growth mode of substantive innovation represented by invention patents, and improve the marginal contribution of innovation in enhancing enterprise value. In terms of enterprise management practice: first, enterprises should enhance the concept of endogenous innovation, dare to innovate input, strive to improve the quality of innovation output, and build core competitive advantages through high-quality innovation. Second, enterprises should be good at keenly capturing the potential competition effect and signal effect information from IPOs of peer enterprises, adjust investment and financing decisions timely.

Key words: IPO approval, enterprise innovation, competition effect, signal effect, enterprise value