Local Industrial Policies and Industry Innovation and Development：Empirical Evidence from the New Energy Automobile Industry Policy Text

Abstract

As an important starting point for promoting green transformation and development, the new energy automobile industry is essential to accelerate the transformation of economic development mode. In this regard, General Secretary Xi Jinping emphasized that “we must increase research and development, carefully study the market, and make good use of policies” during his inspection tour in Shanghai. However, how to “make good use of policies” is an urgent and important problem facing policy-makers and scholars. To this end, based on the information on the official websites of the People’s Government, Department of Finance, Development and Reform Commission, Economic（Industry）and Information Technology Commission of various provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions, this article uses keywords such as “new energy vehicles”“electric vehicles” and “automotives” to screen the policy text, and finally obtains 2289 new energy automobile industry policy text data at 31 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in China, to match the obtained data with the Chinese patent database. Furthermore, according to the semantics of the policy text, this article divides relevant industrial policies into three categories: demand-based policies, supply-based policies, and environment-based policies. On the basis of constructing regional policy effectiveness indicators, demand-based policy effectiveness indicators, supply-based policy effectiveness indicators, and environment-based policy effectiveness indicators, we empirically test the impact of local industrial policies on the innovation and development of the new energy automobile industry. The results of this paper show that:（1）New energy automobile industry policies can effectively stimulate the innovation and development of the industry. After considering issues such as endogeneity, adjustment policy sample time, policy division criteria, traditional automobile industry development, and regional industrial policy competition, the corresponding research conclusions are still valid.（2）Compared with supply-based and demand-based policy tools, environment-based policies are more conducive to promoting the development of the new energy automobile industry.（3）Mechanism analysis shows that, compared with government subsidies and tax incentives, local industrial policies mainly promote industry innovation by strengthening market competition and reducing corporate financing constraints, thereby boosting the development of the new energy automobile industry. This article not only enriches the relevant research on China’s industrial policies and affirms the importance of local governments’ guiding behavior for industrial development, but also provides empirical evidence for the formulation and implementation of local industrial policies, and the research conclusions respond to a certain extent to the guiding theory of “giving provincial governments and below more autonomy” pointed out in the Report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China.