Abstract
By using data on firms listed on Chinese A-share markets from 2011 to 2017, this study analyzes whether the implementation of China’s the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) affects the sustainable innovation ability of firms. To address endogeneity concerns, we construct a quasi-natural experiment that focuses on firms with overseas business relationships, which had further expanded its foreign trade scale due to the BRI policy in 2014 to explore the casual relation between foreign trade and firm innovation sustainability. Baseline results indicate that the sustainable innovation ability of firms has improved significantly since the promulgation of the BRI policy in 2014. In addition, we find that the improvement of sustainable innovation ability is caused by the “going-out” effect, rather than the “bringing-in” effect, which is the result of the BRI policy. Results suggest that free trade has been conductive to promoting firm sustainable innovation ability, which is also confirmed in additional robustness and placebo tests.
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