Spatial Agglomeration, Industrial Land Price and Enterprise Innovation: Evidence from Micro-data of Land Transactions in Industrial Enterprises

Abstract

It has become a consensus in academic circles that enterprise spatial agglomeration promotes technological innovation through comparative advantage of factor cost and knowledge spillover effect. With the increase of agglomeration degree, the advantage of low cost is gradually lost, and even under the constraint of financing, it will inhibit the innovation and development of enterprises. By constructing a new micro-level spatial agglomeration index, this paper investigates the dynamic impact of corporate spatial agglomeration on corporate innovation from the perspective of agglomeration cost. On the basis of using the longitude and latitude of industrial enterprises to construct a new index of agglomeration, this paper further carries out a comprehensive matching on the land market transaction data, patent application data and industrial enterprise data, obtains the micro-data at the enterprise level from 2007 to 2014, and constructs a non-linear intermediary effect model with industrial land price as the breakthrough point. The empirical results show that corporate spatial agglomeration has an “inverted U” effect on corporate innovation. The reason is that agglomeration costs such as increased competition caused by excessive spatial agglomeration and the rise in industrial land prices tighten corporate capital constraints, affect corporate resource allocation, and cause enterprises to reduce research and development investment. Research on heterogeneity shows that industrial enterprises have obvious preference characteristics for the direction of innovation investment in different stages of spatial agglomeration. According to this, the local government should scientifically control the agglomeration layout, on the one hand, give full play to the knowledge spillover effect of agglomeration, and on the other hand, mitigate the adverse impact of the rapid increase in land prices on innovation.