基于交易治理的视角,本文实证研究了机构投资者整体、证券投资基金和保险基金等对公司研发投资的影响。研究表明,机构投资者整体交易强度以及证券投资基金交易强度与公司研发强度显著负相关,但这种负相关关系只发生在研发投资过度的公司,研发投资不足的公司不存在类似关系,保险基金交易强度与研发强度关系不显著,而且机构投资者整体和证券投资基金交易强度还能够显著促进公司创新效率提升。异质性研究发现,机构投资者整体交易强度与研发强度的负相关关系主要局限于经济发达地区上市公司,而且对非国有上市公司的影响显著高于国有上市公司。在影响机理方面,研究发现股票流动性和管理层财富业绩敏感性在机构投资者交易强度和研发强度的关系之间发挥了显著的调节作用。

In recent years, China's socio-economic development has faced significant internal resource constraints and a severe international economic environment. Technological innovation has become a crucial pathway for China to break through Western technological blockades, achieve major strategic goals such as building an innovative country, and drive sustainable development. Given the highly concentrated ownership structure of Chinese listed companies and the relatively low proportion of institutional investors, these entities confront challenges in actively participating in corporate governance due to imbalances between costs and benefits. Consequently, the capacity of China's institutional investors to promote corporate governance and technological innovation, along with the mechanisms through which they exert such influence, has emerged as a widely debated topic in academic and practical circles.
From the perspective of transaction governance, this paper empirically studies the impact of transaction intensity of institutional investors, securities investment funds, and insurance funds on corporate R&D intensity. The results show that the trading intensity of both institutional investors and securities investment funds is negatively correlated with the R&D intensity of companies, but the trading intensity of insurance funds is not significantly correlated with the R&D intensity of companies. On this basis, this paper further divides the samples into an over-invested R&D group and an under-invested R&D group. It is found that the trading intensity of institutional investors as a whole and securities investment funds is significantly negatively correlated with the R&D intensity of over-invested R&D samples, but not significantly correlated with the transaction intensity of under-invested R&D group, and is significantly positively correlated with the innovation efficiency of companies. Insurance fund trading intensity has no significant effect on R&D intensity and innovation efficiency of the two groups of samples. The conclusions of this paper remain unchanged after using the robustness analysis methods such as the fixed effect model, instrumental variable method, replacement of grouping variables, and replacement of independent variables and dependent variables. Heterogeneity research reveals that the negative correlation between the overall transaction intensity and R&D intensity of institutional investors is mainly limited to listed companies in economically developed areas, and the impact on non-state-owned listed companies is significantly higher than that on state-owned listed companies. In terms of the influencing mechanism, it is found that stock liquidity and management wealth performance sensitivity play a significant moderating role in the relationship between institutional investors' transaction intensity and R&D intensity.
Compared with previous studies, the contributions of this paper are reflected in the following aspects. (1) Different from the existing studies from the perspective of shareholding, this paper verifies the overall governance effect of institutional investors on corporate R&D investment from the perspective of transaction governance, that is, although the overall transaction intensity of institutional investors reduces corporate R&D intensity, this only occurs in companies with excessive R&D investment and has no significant impact on companies with insufficient R&D investment. In addition, it significantly promotes innovation efficiency, indicating that although its transaction governance has no significant impact on the under-investment in R&D caused by the opportunistic behavior of a company's executives to enjoy a “quiet life”, it can restrain and significantly reduce the opportunistic behavior of a company's executives in seeking personal benefits through excessive investment in R&D and reduce the waste of R&D funds. Therefore, from the perspective of transaction governance, it shows that our institutional investors are effective supervisors. (2) In terms of institutional investor heterogeneity, this paper verifies that securities investment funds, as independent institutional investors, have the same impact on R&D investment and innovation efficiency as institutional investors as a whole, while insurance funds have no significant impact on R&D intensity and innovation efficiency. (3) This paper finds that the market development in the location of a company, the heterogeneity of the ownership type, stock liquidity, and management wealth performance sensitivity have significant impacts on the transaction governance of institutional investors.
From the perspective of transaction governance, this paper finds that China's institutional investors, especially independent institutional investors, play a significant role in governance over corporate R&D investment and promote innovation efficiency, which provides new evidence for the influence of institutional investors on corporate governance and technological innovation and enriches literature on the impact of institutional investors on corporate governance and technological innovation.