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Abstract Economic policy uncertainty, as one of the important sources of external risks for enterprises, inevitably has an impact on enterprises behavior. The volatile external policy environment makes it challenging for entrepreneurs to form stable expectations of the macroeconomy, and they can only adapt to the environment by adjusting enterprise’s productivity. Therefore, it is essential to explore the impact of economic policy uncertainty on China’s enterprise total factor productivity. To more accurately reflect the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and firm productivity, this paper constructs a provincial-level economic policy uncertainty index, which differs from the existing literature that uses either the China economic policy uncertainty index constructed by Baker et al. or the national-level economic policy uncertainty index synthesized from provincial party newspaper data by Wang et al. This paper adopts the LP method to measure the productivity of each enterprise and innovatively constructs corresponding theoretical and empirical models to examine the changing relationship between provincial-level economic policy uncertainty and firm productivity from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, which expands the research scope of micro-enterprise behavior under economic policy uncertainty. The research findings indicate that after adding control variables and controlling fixed effect, economic policy uncertainty significantly increases firm productivity. Furthermore, when distinguishing between high and low economic policy uncertainties and different regions, it is found that economic policy uncertainty promotes enterprise productivity more significantly under low economic policy uncertainty. The impact of enterprise productivity in the mid-west regions of China is positive, while that in the eastern regions is negative. The productivity gap between the mid-west and the eastern regions is gradually narrowing, and there is an obvious catching-up effect in the mid-west regions. It is worth noting that, after using the realized volatility method to distinguish between good economic policy uncertainty and bad economic policy uncertainty, it is obvious that the improvement of enterprise productivity in the mid-west regions is the result of the combined effects, and the good economic policy uncertainty caused by favorable policies is the key factor for the productivity improvement of enterprises in the mid-west regions. Further analysis shows that the supply-side structural reform has promoted the improvement of enterprise productivity. Moreover, the mediation effect model reveals that enterprise investment efficiency and R&D expenditure are crucial in driving changes in enterprise productivity. Finally, the robustness of the regression results is tested by using the OP and ACF methods to measure enterprise productivity, treating the endogenous problem. Overall, the improvement of enterprise productivity relies on continuous technological innovation and high investment efficiency. The government should strengthen favorable policies, especially those that encourage technological innovation, and strive to create a good business environment. Additionally, institutional mechanisms should be established to promote the improvement of enterprise investment efficiency.
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Published: 30 August 2023
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