R&D subsidies, executive background and innovation of Chinese listed companies

Enterprises are the mainstay of national innovation. The improvement of enterprise productivity and the sustained and rapid development of the economy are inseparable from the research and development (R&D) and innovation of enterprises. Most previous research studies have focused on the economic system and scale of enterprises to study the impact of government–enterprise relations on corporate innovation. This article takes the heterogeneity background characteristics of executives as the starting point, discusses the internal mechanism of R&D subsidies, the background characteristics of corporate executives and the innovative behaviour of Chinese listed companies, and draws two conclusions: (1) The current Chinese government’s innovation subsidy allocation process still has some preferences, such as the company’s executives have more R&D subsidies for listed companies with a background in government, technical background and high academic background; and (2) Although the three types of background characteristics of executives are beneficial to the company’s R&D subsidies, the government background of executives has not significantly promoted the innovation of listed companies, while the background of technology R&D and high academic background of executives have significantly promoted corporate innovation.