Can university-enterprise cooperative innovation promote total factor productivity? – Evidence from Chinese-listed firms

Based on the patent data of university-enterprise cooperative innovation (UECI) from CNIPA and the financial data of Chinese listed companies from 2010 to 2022, we find that UECI can promote the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises and that the average application value of each UECI patent is 29.07 million yuan, and confirm the robustness of our conclusions using the instrumental variables method, system GMM and the Heckman two-step method. The results of the mediation analysis show that UECI promotes the TFP of enterprises through three channels: alleviating financing constraints, attracting more knowledge workers and increasing the innovation efficiency of the enterprise. UECI can build alumni linkages between universities and enterprises, expand financing channels and attract more university students to join the company after cooperation, thus increasing their workers' overall education level. UECI can also enable the firm to emulate academics how to innovate more effectively. Heterogeneity analysis shows that UECI can lead to a higher TFP improvement for enterprises in the leasing and business service industry and scientific research and technology service industry, which are 97 and 3 times higher than the baseline regression, respectively.