Abstract:    To promote China′s high-quality development process, a series of policies have been put forward emphasizing that it is necessary to constantly create a better environment for the development of the private enterprises and let the sources of innovation of the private enterprises flow fully. In this regard, the research on how to promote R&D investment of private enterprises has a certain practical significance. The improvement of the court-centered judicial environment is an important part of encouraging the reform and innovation of private enterprises. China′s court organization system is different from western countries. There are the Supreme People′s Court, the Higher People′s Courts, the Intermediate People′s Courts, and the Basic-level People′s Courts. It′s mainly the responsibility of the Higher People′s Courts to formulate and implement directional judicial guidelines and policies. In addition, China′s court management system has a strong administrative and bureaucratic color. The president of the Higher People′s Court has a certain influence on the judicial efficiency of the courts and the trial of cases. Therefore, this paper discusses the relationship between the turnover of the presidents of the Higher People′s Courts and the choice of innovation strategies of private enterprises, hoping to provide a theoretical reference for China′s judicial reform and the implementation of innovation strategies.
    Based on the analysis of behavioral signal theory and "prominent effect", this paper hypothesizes that under the influence of information asymmetry and limited rationality, the turnover of the presidents of the Higher People′s Courts will make private enterprises have a positive psychological bias on the judicial environment and change their short-term innovation decisions. What′s more, based on resource perspective, theoretical assumptions are made on the role of the intermediate mechanism of financing constraints and technical information constraints. Using the data of the turnover of president of the Higher People′s Courts collected by hand to match the data of R&D of private manufacturing listed enterprises from 2009 to 2016, this paper provides an empirical evidence on the assumptions above. 
    The empirical result shows that the behavioral signal of the turnover of presidents of the Higher people′s Courts causes positive psychological deviation and increase R&D investment of private enterprises via the "highlight effect". In addition, it alleviates the financing constraints and technical information constraints of private enterprises by promoting commercial credit, expanding the size of regional technology trading markets and foreign direct investment to increase private enterprises′ R&D investment indirectly. Further research shows that for private enterprises that are in the high-tech industries, in the fiercely competitive industries, not politically connected and in the growth stage, the affect is more significant; Compared with who from the court or other government departments, the presidents of the Higher People′s Courts from other departments of politics and law have the most significant promotion effect on the innovation of private enterprises; The presidents of the Higher People′s Courts who are natives of the province and have longer served in the departments of politics and law have greater roles in promoting the innovation of private enterprises; If the secretaries of the Provincial Party Committee and the presidents of the Higher People′s Courts have replaced in the same year, it is not conductive to R&D investment of private enterprises.
    Based on the research results, this paper draws the following policy implications: First, China should make the judicial information public, reduce the information asymmetry between the judicial departments and private enterprises, and stabilize and boost the market′s confidence in the judicial environment. Second, it′s better to overcome judicial localization externally and prevent judicial administration internally. Finally, it′s necessary to improve the governance system of judicial officials, for example, raising the professional threshold for judicial officials.
    Compared with the existing research, the innovation of this paper lies in: First, it discusses the impact of the turnover of judicial officials on micro-enterprise innovation behavior for the first time, enriches and expands related researches in the field of law and innovation and official governance. Secondly, this paper reinforces the content dimensions of signal theory from the perspective of behavioral signal theory and "highlighting effect", and expands signal theory to the macro level of research. In the context of China, the embodiment of the behavior signal of the turnover of the presidents of the Higher People′s Courts in the field of corporate innovation is verified.

Key words:  turnover of judicial officials, private enterprise, R&D investment, behavioral signal theory