关键词: 外商直接投资, 创新型创业, 倒“U型”

Abstract:    As an important factor to promote economic growth, promote employment, guide the harmonious and stable development of society, and enhance the competitiveness of the country, entrepreneurship has attracted more and more attention. However, China′s total entrepreneurship activity index (TEA) has gradually declined since 2014. At the same time, China′s entrepreneurship activities are generally characterized by poor innovation, poor quality and low success rate. So, what factors can promote the innovation of new ventures, improve the quality of entrepreneurship, and enhance the success rate of entrepreneurship have become the issues that should be paid attention to in the formulation of China′s entrepreneurship policy.
   Although some scholars have defined entrepreneurship, but there is no literature defining innovative entrepreneurship yet. This paper holds that innovative entrepreneurship refers to the provision of advanced or unique products or services to the market through improvement or innovation on the basis of existing products or services, or through the establishment of new enterprises. Among the factors affecting entrepreneurship, FDI should not be ignored. There are abundant studies on the impact of FDI on entrepreneurship activities. Some of the studies support that FDI has positive impact on entrepreneurship, others believe that FDI has negative impact on entrepreneurship, and there are also studies believe that FDI has both positive and negative impact on the new entrants. The reason why the existing research on the linear relationship between FDI and entrepreneurship is not consistent is that the existing literature does not consider the non-linear relationship between FDI and entrepreneurship. Based on the existing literature, this paper studies the non-linear relationship between FDI and innovative entrepreneurship hoping that FDI can be reasonably introduced into China in order to enhance China′s innovation entrepreneurship, improve the quality of entrepreneurship, and put forward feasible policy recommendations.
   First, this study analyses the mechanism. On the one hand, FDI can increase the demand for domestic products through backward and forward linkages generated by demand creation effect, promote innovative partners through competition-driven effect, and promote innovative entrepreneurship activities through technology spillover effect. On the other hand, FDI can also change the choice of entrepreneurs through employment-driven effect, absorb high-tech personnel with original entrepreneurial intention into employees of foreign-funded enterprises, and otherwise squeeze entrepreneurs out of the industry through competition, which hinders innovative entrepreneurship. This shows that the possible relationship between FDI level and innovative entrepreneurship is not a simple linear relationship, but rather a complex non-linear relationship: when the level of FDI is low, foreign-funded enterprises have just entered the host country, the host country′s enterprises have just contacted foreign-funded enterprises, the forward and backward linkages create good cooperation opportunities for innovative enterprises, and the technology spillover effect of foreign-funded enterprises is also showed. It is beginning to appear that driven by the competition of foreign-funded enterprises, new ventures strive to innovate in order to win the market. In the case of relatively small scale of FDI entry, with the gradual increase of FDI scale, the demand creation effect, competitive pressure effect and technology spillover effect of FDI on innovative entrepreneurship become more and more obvious, which has a positive impact on innovative entrepreneurship. When the scale of FDI is getting larger and larger, beyond a certain threshold and reaching a higher level, the continued entry of FDI will cause the host country market to be occupied by a large number of foreign-funded enterprises, a large number of domestic employment to be absorbed by foreign-funded enterprises, and the technology spillover effect of FDI is gradually reduced, the hindrance of FDI to innovative entrepreneurship will appear. Therefore, in general, FDI can promote innovative entrepreneurship through a variety of effects, but the large scale of FDI may also inhibit innovative entrepreneurship, so there should be an inverted ‘U′ relationship between them. That is, when the scale of FDI is at a low level, the further inflowing of FDI can promote innovative entrepreneurship activities, but when the scale of FDI exceeds a certain threshold, the further promotion of the scale of FDI will hinder innovative entrepreneurship activities.
   Second，according to the theoretical analysis, this paper constructs an empirical model. Taking innovative entrepreneurship as the interpreted variable, foreign direct investment as the main explanatory variable, and adding economic development, entrepreneurship cost, openness, labor participation rate, entrepreneurship capability, entrepreneurship intention, fear of failure, career choice and entrepreneurial opportunity as control variables. In addition, the square term of FDI scale is added to validate the relationship, and the panel measurement model is set up. Considering the availability, continuity and rationality of data, we use panel data of 35 countries from 2010 to 2016, this paper makes an empirical study on the relationship between OFDI and innovative entrepreneurship.
    Third, according to the theoretical and empirical research, this paper provides an important way to promote innovative entrepreneurship activities, that is, the state must grasp the introduction of FDI at the macro level, prevent the blind expansion of FDI scale in some regions from having a negative impact on innovative entrepreneurship, and moderately encourage FDI inflow in other regions. As far as China is concerned, FDI inflows are concentrated in the eastern coastal areas, while in the central and western regions, especially in the western regions, FDI is relatively scarce, and the scale of FDI is far from reaching a moderate level. Therefore, the state should promote more foreign-funded enterprises to invest in the central and western regions, control the level of FDI in the eastern regions, and improve the scale of FDI in the central and western regions through the adjustment of fiscal, taxation and financial policies.
   So, government should pay attention to the role of regional FDI scale in innovative entrepreneurship. The policies of attracting foreign investment in different regions should be differentiated. On the premise of achieving a moderate and reasonable scale of FDI in the eastern region, government should guide high-quality foreign investment to the central and western regions. The central and western regions should actively enhance the human capital and institutional environment, enhance the absorptive capacity and competitiveness of FDI technology spillovers, so as to promote innovative entrepreneurship activities by drawing lessons and learning from foreign-funded enterprises and competing with them. Through this adjustment, we can achieve a balanced and moderate growth of FDI nationwide, and promote the development of innovative entrepreneurship activities.

Key words: FDI, innovative entrepreneurship, reverse-U-shaped relationship