Basic scientific research serves as the cornerstone for enterprises to achieve breakthrough innovation; however, currently, it has not received enough attention from enterprises. In recent years, enterprises account for only about 5% of China's investment in basic research, significantly lower than the 23% to 36% seen in developed countries. In fact, the Chinese government has consistently encouraged the establishment of the state key laboratories (SKLs) in enterprises. Distinguished from the SKLs established in universities and research institutions, the SKLs in enterprises primarily focus on addressing the future development demands of society and industries, and conduct applied basic research and pre-competitive common technology research. Regrettably, the academic community has primarily focused on the output characteristics and economic consequences of SKLs in universities and research institutes, paying less attention to SKLs in enterprises. Considering that basic research, as a typical public good, has a low monopoly and lacks direct commercial value, it is still uncertain whether the construction of SKLs in profit-maximizing enterprises can promote basic research, leading to the first question: Can and how does the construction of SKLs promote basic research in enterprises? This study further argues that the impact of SKLs on basic research varies due to differences among enterprises, and thus, it intends to verify if the effects of utilizing SKLs for basic research differ among enterprises of different scales and industries. Third,some scholars have pointed out that there might be a negative correlation between basic research outcomes and the market value of enterprises in specific industries. Existing studies have focused on whether enterprises engaged in basic research can generate technological value or market value, but they have ignored the crucial issue of how to enhance the value of basic research. Therefore, the third issue addressed in this paper is: Are the basic research outcomes generated within the enterprise SKLs more valuable?
Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share listed companies from 2005 to 2020 are taken as the research objects, and the control samples are screened by the PSM model to screen control samples. After screening, 3 864 annual observation samples are obtained, totaling 345 listed companies. Among them, 160 enterprises with SKLs are the experimental group, and the remaining 185 enterprises are the control group. The impact of SKLs construction on enterprise basic research is empirically tested by the PSM-DID method. The results indicate that SKLs construction promotes enterprise basic research, bringing a significant increase in the quantity of basic research outcomes, although the improvement of the quality of basic research outcomes is not significant. These effects of SKLs construction are more pronounced in large enterprises and industries with low competition levels. Moreover, the SKLs construction can increase the internal knowledge stock of enterprises, improve the ability of enterprises to absorb external knowledge, promote technological innovation, and create technological value, while also enhancing human capital, transmitting positive signals, and enhancing market value. In short, it improves the technological value and market value of basic research, particularly high-level basic research.
This study presents several novelties. Firstly, it enriches the research on the operational impact of SKLs. Secondly, through the utilization of the scenario of batch construction of SKLs in enterprises, the empirical research effectively eliminates the interference of parallel economic events, reduces endogenous noise, and establishes a clearer causal relationship between SKLs construction and enterprise basic research. Subsequently, it examines the impact of the construction of SKLs on the value of enterprise basic research, shifting the research focus from the commonly-explored question of "whether basic research can create value" to the neglected key proposition of "how basic research can create value". Finally, the study suggests that the government should enhance support for enterprise SKLs, strengthen the construction of talent teams within these laboratories, and expedite the system construction of basic research property rights protection to better incentivize enterprises to engage in basic research.