Abstract:

Technology Trading Markets （TTMs） play an important role in the national unified market and national innovation system. Based on the National Patent Technology Exhibition and Trading Platform Plan， a staggered DID model is adopted to analyze the impact of TTMs on firm innovation. It is found that TTMs exhibit a significant innovation incentive effect. In terms of the mechanism， TTMs improve firm innovation through increasing the number of researchers and promoting collaborative RD. The heterogeneity analysis shows that the better a firm’s innovation foundation， the more pronounced the positive effect of TTMs on innovation quality； conversely， the weaker a firm’s innovation foundation， the stronger the boost the market provides to innovation quantity. Moreover， firms in industries with faster technological change have a stronger incentive to increase innovation， in terms of both quantity and quality. As a whole， TTMs fail to expand firms’ innovation boundaries； however， the subgroup tests indicate that they significantly broaden the innovation boundaries of non-state-owned firms.

Key words: technology trading markets （TTMs）, firm innovation, collaborative RD, innovation boundary