Abstract:    As an important means to promote high-quality economic development, government environmental audit has been given a new historical mission and responsibility in the process of economic transformation. The development of China′s government environmental audit starts relatively late and can be summarized in the following four stages: the initial stage (1983-1997), which began to pilot government environmental audit; the exploratory stage (1998-2007), which began to explore government environmental audit; the development stage (2008-2012), which began to combine government environmental audit with other audit; and the strategy stage (2013-to the present), which began to deepen government environmental audit. It can be seen that the government environmental audit is in the reform stage, where there is an urgent need to innovate systems and mechanisms to better promote the construction of ecological civilization and boost the development of the innovative economy. But there are few relevant empirical studies of government environmental audit, and the only empirical research mainly focuses on its environmental effects and lacks a discussion on its economic effects.Therefore, this paper manually collects some data on government environmental audit, and takes China′s Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2007 to 2018 as the research object to examine the impact of government environmental audit on corporate innovation. The main research conclusions of this paper are as follows: First, government environmental audit has a significant positive impact on corporate innovation. This research conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests such as Heckman′s two-step method, propensity score matching method, and placebo test. Second, the positive impact of government environmental audit on corporate innovation is mainly manifested in the current and next period of government environmental audit, and is not significant in the next two periods of government environmental audit, indicating that the continuous impact of government environmental audit on corporate innovation is not strong. Third, the impact mechanism of government environmental audit on corporate innovation is that government environmental audit mainly promotes corporate innovation through market competition mechanism and financing restraint mechanism. In other words, government environmental audit will promote corporate innovation by improving corporate market competition and alleviating corporate financing constraints. Fourth, the positive impact of government environmental audit on corporate innovation is different in the nature of property rights, that is, compared with state-owned enterprises, the positive impact of government environmental audit on non-state-owned enterprise innovation is more significant, indicating that government environmental audit can effectively make up for the insufficiency of the nature of property rights to promote corporate innovation. Fifth, the positive impact of government environmental audit on corporate innovation is different in the marketization level, that is, compared with enterprises with a higher level of marketization, the positive impact of government environmental audit on corporate innovation with a lower level of marketization is more significant, which shows that government environmental audit can effectively make up for the lack of market-oriented mechanism to promote corporate innovation.The research conclusions of this paper enrich the research on the economic consequences of government environmental audit and the driving factors of corporate innovation in theory, and provide important enlightenment for the audit department to improve the government environmental audit system and promote the development of an innovative economy in practice. The main enlightenment of this article is as follows: First, the government environmental audit guidelines and operating guidelines should be issued in a timely manner to better play the role of government environmental audit in promoting corporate innovation; Second, a periodic government environmental audit system should be established to enhance the sustainability of the impact of government environmental audit on corporate innovation; Third, the reform of privatization of state-owned enterprises should be conducted to better promote the innovation of state-owned enterprises. Fourth, the government environmental audit system and market-based systems should be organically coordinated to better promote corporate innovation.

Key words: government environmental audit, corporate innovation, enterprise investment in R&D