Dr. Hou Jianxiang, a lecturer at the School of Public Finance and Management, recently published a paper titled "Uniform Market Access and Corporate Innovation Behavior: Structural Estimation and Mechanism Decomposition" in the prestigious journal China Industrial Economics. Dr. Hou is the first author of the article, which appeared in the fifth issue of the journal's 2025 volume, with Yunnan University of Finance and Economics (YUFE) listed as the primary affiliated institution.

China Industrial Economics, supervised by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) and hosted by its Institute of Industrial Economics, is a leading comprehensive academic journal in the fields of applied economics and management.

Set against the backdrop of a new technological and industrial revolution reshaping the global innovation landscape, the article explores how unified market access rules can stimulate corporate innovation, a key focus of China's national strategy. The paper points out that while previous reforms have significantly lowered explicit entry barriers, implicit obstacles such as local protectionism and inconsistent regulations remain critical pain points that hinder the flow of innovative elements. This environment often leads companies to prioritize rent-seeking over innovation to gain a competitive advantage.

To analyze the underlying mechanisms, the article innovatively combines reduced-form and structural estimation methods, constructing a theoretical framework that includes the dual mechanisms of market competition and rent-seeking substitution. The study finds that the reform implementing a negative list system for market access has significantly promoted corporate innovation, increasing the innovation rates of incumbent and entering firms by 1.46% and 0.16%, respectively.

The mechanism decomposition reveals that the reform's core impact lies in a "rent-seeking substitution effect." By establishing uniform and transparent access rules, the reform effectively dismantles administrative monopolies, prompting companies to reduce rent-seeking behaviors and redirect resources toward research and development. The study concludes that the focus of current innovation policy should shift from simply "lowering barriers" to "establishing rules." Building a unified, fair, and transparent national market access system is fundamental to eradicating the conditions that foster rent-seeking and providing a powerful impetus for developing "new quality productive forces" and building a modernized economic system. This research offers an important theoretical perspective and empirical evidence for understanding and improving market access systems to precisely stimulate corporate innovation.

Dr. Hou Jianxiang is a lecturer at YUFE's School of Public Finance and Management. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Yunnan University. His primary research interests include fiscal systems, public policy evaluation, and industrial organization, and he specializes in applying causal inference and structural estimation methods. He has published numerous articles in authoritative journals such as China Industrial Economics, China Rural Economy, and Fiscal Research.