Abstract: From the perspective of official incentive mechanism, this paper analyzes the action mechanism on local corporate R&D input during the limited tenure of the government officials. Because the R&D indicators have been included in “the Tenth Five-Year Plan”since the year of 2000, this paper examines the relationship between the enterprise R&D input and the tenure of the provincial officials from 2000 to 2012. The results show that there exists a significant inversed U-type relationship between the corporate R&D input and the official tenure: the enterprise R&D input first increases then decrease during the local officials’ tenure. Further examination finds that similar inverted U-shaped relationship exists between the part of government fund in the corporate R&D input and the official’s tenure, while the part of bank credit is not significantly related with the official’s tenure, which indicates that the local officials mainly exert influence on the local corporate R&D input through the use of financial subsidies. The effect of local official’s tenure will continue to pass on the corporate R&D input and efficiency. While a comparison to the data of 1990-1999 shows that the official’s tenure has no significant influence on the local corporate R&D input before the implementation of the Tenth Five-Year Plan.

Key words: dynasties tenure in office; political cycle; enterprise R&D input; R&D intensity