The Impact of Government Subsidies on R&D Investment of New Energy Vehicle Enterprises

New energy vehicles constitute a crucial component of low-carbon economic systems and green development initiatives. Supported by government subsidy policies, the new energy vehicle industry has achieved remarkable development in recent years. This study conducts an empirical analysis based on panel data of 93 listed new energy vehicle enterprises from 2012 to 2022 to explore the impacts of government subsidies on corporate R&D investment. Using Stata 17.0, we use return on assets, debt-to-asset ratio, enterprise size and operating efficiency as control variables. A two-way fixed-effect model is selected via the Hausman test, followed by linear regression analysis. Furthermore, a dynamic panel vector autoregression (PVAR) model is employed to examine the dynamic interaction between government subsidies and corporate R&D investment. This research perspective overcomes the limitations of traditional static innovation policy research, effectively supplements the empirical evidence on long-term policy incentive effects in the new energy vehicle industry, and enriches the theoretical and empirical literature on the intrinsic dynamic correlation between government subsidies and corporate innovation investment. The empirical results show that government subsidies exert a significantly positive effect on firms’ R&D investment, and that there exists a stable long-term two-way positive interaction and dynamic equilibrium between the two. However, such mutual promotion effects are economically weak in magnitude, and the long-term evolutionary trends of both variables are predominantly dominated by their respective internal self-reinforcing inertia. In view of the limited incentive contributions of existing subsidy policies, the results of this study suggest the need to optimize the precision and targeting of government subsidy mechanisms to amplify policy incentive efficiency, while enterprises should fully leverage their endogenous R&D inertia to strengthen their independent innovation capabilities. The presented findings provide empirical evidence and policy guidance for the promotion of stable R&D innovation and high-quality development of the new energy vehicle industry.