Abstract: Incentivizing companies to take a certain level of risk to promote R&D innovation contributes to the high-quality development of the real economy. Based on the theoretical framework of the local information advantages, this paper takes the establishment of the administrative examination and approval centers as a quasi-natural experiment to systematically investigate the impact of the reform of the administrative examination and approval system on the level of corporate risk taking. The results show that the reform of the approval system can significantly improve the level of enterprise risk taking, and this effect is more significant in the companies with higher degree of information dispersion of investment opportunities. The above research conclusions are still valid after the endogenous and robustness tests. The heterogeneity test reveals that in the samples located in the regions with higher marketization or with lower degree of client concentration, the reform of the administrative approval system has a more significant effect on the improvement of enterprise risk bearing level.The test of the action mechanism reveals that the reform of the administrative approval system has significantly improved the investment flexibility and the market competition degree. From the perspective of risk bearing, the research conclusion has revealed the economic effects brought forward by the reform of the administrative approval system and its inner mechanism, it also has a certain enlightenment to further promote the reform of simplifying administrative procedures and delegating powers to lower levels.

Key words: reform of the administrative examination and approval system, risk-taking, degree of information dispersion