In "new normal" economy, China is transforming from high-speed growth mode driven by increasing input of production factors to high-quality development mode driven by technological innovation, which has become core force of the development of modern enterprises, especially high-tech ones. As innovation presents characteristics of high investment and high risk, innovative enterprises are required to input a long-term and large amount of capital. Therefore, innovation decision-making is constrained by the financial strength and financing capacity, which makes innovation one of the most prudent investment decisions of enterprises.

In order to encourage enterprises to carry out innovative activities and ease the pressure of the innovative financing, China promulgated the Regulation for the Identification of High-tech Enterprises (Regulation) in 2008. It stipulated that enterprises can be entitled to the High-tech Enterprises and possess corresponding rights of the tax relief and other policy subsidies when they reach certain threshold value of R&D intensity (R&D expenditure/Prime operating revenue). However, there were enterprises that maneuvered their R&D expenditure to meet the requirement of the R&D intensity by the Regulation aiming at easing the financing constraints. This paper tries to explore the impacts of financing constraints of different channels on innovative decisions of enterprises. Observation of R&D maneuver is made to investigate if it helped to alleviate the pressure of financing constraints on enterprise innovative decision-making. The study thus has important significance in exploring principal factors of innovative decisions of enterprises and policy effects of government subsidies as well. 

First of all, this paper constructs a theoretical framework of impacts of financing constraints of different channels, including internal financing and external financing, on innovative decision-making, and hypotheses are put forward. Secondly, a basic econometric is built to investigate impacts of financing constraints on innovation decision-making. The fact that some enterprises maneuvered their R&D activities, such as adjusting accounting subjects, inflating R&D expenditures and so on to meet the requirement of R&D intensity by the Regulation and gain tax reduction and government subsidies is taken into account, and this paper then studies the impacts of financing constraints on innovation decision-making from the respective of R&D maneuver and focus on its distorting incentives. Accordingly, this paper further constructs a R&D maneuver model to further investigate the effects of financing constraints on enterprise innovation decision. Finally, this paper applies data of manufacturing enterprise in the database of listed companies from 2008 to 2018 and employs the logit model to make a test. 

It is concluded as followed: (1) Financing constraints do not inhibit the innovation activities of Chinese enterprises, but actually promote the initiative of enterprises to participate in innovative activities. (2) Some enterprises adopted R&D maneuver in order to obtain the title of high-tech enterprises and corresponding policy subsidies after the promulgation of the Regulation in 2008, which distorts the restraining effects of financing constraints on enterprises′ innovation-oriented decision. Moreover, the stronger these financing constraints are, the stronger the motivation for enterprises to employ R&D maneuver. (3) The grouping test based on the heterogeneity of enterprises shows that financing constraints have a significant promoting effect on technology intensive and capital intensive enterprises; technology-intensive enterprises have a more obvious tendency of R&D maneuver; the distortion effect of financing constraints of private enterprises or manufacturing enterprises in the eastern regions on innovation decision-making is more significant; foreign-owned enterprises are most likely to participate in R&D maneuver.