人才吸引政策、企业创新与溢出效应

摘要

This paper examines how high-level talent attraction policies affect corporate innovation, using the staggered implementation of China’s provincial talent programs as a quasi-natural experiment. Using a difference-in-differences design, we find that the policy significantly increases both the quantity and quality of firm-level innovation, as measured by patent counts and citations. The effects are stronger in settings with greater innovation frictions: firms in industries subject to U.S. high-tech export controls and firms located in high-housing-price provinces. We identify three mechanisms underlying these effects: (i) mitigation of ex post holdup risks through retention-oriented policy designs, (ii) increased innovation output by recruited high-level talent, and (iii) spillover effects, including productivity gains among incumbent inventors in firms that recruit program-selected talent and regional spillovers to local firms without program-selected talent. We further provide suggestive evidence that the policy-induced innovation effects are reflected in the economic value of firm innovation. Our findings highlight the role of talent attraction policies in promoting firm innovation and offer policy implications for innovation-driven development in emerging economies.