Identification and Mechanism Test of the Effect of Capital Market Opening-up on Empowering Innovation-Driven Development of Specialized, Sophisticated, Unique and New Enterprises

Capital market opening-up represents a crucial component of China's comprehensive high-level economic opening-up strategy, serving as a catalyst for sustainable economic growth and structural transformation. Since the 1990s, China has successively piloted and introduced a series of progressive policies aimed at liberalizing its capital markets, achieving substantial macroeconomic outcomes. In particular, the official launch of the Shanghai-Hong Kong, China Stock Connect in 2014 marked a significant milestone by realizing two-way stock trading between investors in mainland China and Hong Kong, China, thereby enhancing market liquidity and integration. Against this dynamic macroeconomic backdrop, taking corporate innovation as a primary indicator of high-quality economic development, this paper rigorously examines the impact of the Shanghai-Hong Kong, China Stock Connect policy on corporate innovation capabilities. Using the econometric software Stata, this study selects A-share listed Specialized, Sophisticated, Unique, and New enterprises on the Shanghai Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2023 as the primary research sample. By adopting the Shanghai-Hong Kong, China Stock Connect mechanism as a quasi-natural experiment, the research employs a robust time-varying Difference-in-Differences (DID) model to explore the profound effect of capital market opening-up on the innovation performance of these specialized enterprises. Furthermore, the study comprehensively analyzes the overarching policy effect, empirically verifies the direct positive impact on corporate innovation outputs, and investigates the critical mediating role of corporate governance mechanisms. Finally, it puts forward targeted, evidence-based policy references for both government regulators and enterprise managers to optimize innovation-driven development strategies.