Influence of Financial Support on Regional Innovation Across Different Phases of the COVID-19 Pandemic

ABSTRACT

The financial market and regional innovation have been severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper investigates the impact of financial support on regional innovation at different stages of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2019 to 2021 in China. Before the pandemic, bank support positively influenced regional innovation quantity and quality, while government support had a positive effect on quantity. Throughout COVID-19, both types of support promoted regional innovation quantity and quality. In the post-pandemic era, bank support had a modest positive impact on quantity, while government support influenced both quantity and quality. Evidences from other countries support these findings. The study guides decision-makers to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on regional innovation with specific guidance for government and banking institutions.

KEYWORDS:

• Financial support
• regional innovation
• COVID-19 pandemic

JEL:

• H510
• H390

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Supplementary Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/1540496X.2023.2278654

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Social Science Foundation of China under Grant number [19FGLB014]; the Strategic Economy Interdisciplinarity (Beijing Universities Advanced Disciplines Initiative) under Grant number [GJJ2019163]; and the Emerging Interdisciplinary Project of Central University of Finance and Economics under Grant number [020659919002].