The Impact of China’s R&D and Innovation Strategy on Total Factor Productivity of Listed Intelligent Manufacturing Firms

Total factor productivity (TFP) acts as the core micro-foundation for enterprises to enhance resource allocation efficiency, thereby fundamentally boosting their sustainable development capability and long-term sustainability performance. Based on differentiated exposure to the R&D additional deduction policy (the R&D policy), this paper explores TFP disparities and heterogeneous responses among intelligent manufacturing enterprises, together with potential mechanisms. The results indicate that enterprises with access to the R&D policy present higher TFP levels on average and show noticeable differences in TFP performance relative to non-affected enterprises. Mechanism tests suggest that the R&D policy is associated with relieved financing constraints, strengthened R&D willingness, and optimized allocation of R&D resources, which may jointly correlate with the variation in enterprise TFP. Further heterogeneous analysis demonstrates that such disparities in TFP performance are more pronounced in enterprises with high labor intensity, low capital intensity, slow industrial technology iteration, eastern regional distribution, and large scale. This paper clarifies the differential performance characteristics and potential influencing pathways of enterprise TFP under the context of the R&D policy, and provides empirical evidence and practical references originating from China for relevant policy research in other countries and regions.