Abstract: The “Thirteenth Five － Year Plan” pointed out that in order to build a well －off society in an all － round way，China needs to complete the task of eliminating rural poverty and regional poverty. Under this background，President Xi Jinping further proposed a targeted poverty alleviation strategy. Targeted poverty alleviation is that using scientific and effective procedures to implement a poverty alleviation model of targeted identification，targeted assistance，and targeted management for different poor farmers and different poor areas. In recent years，the Chinese government has urged all levels and departments to actively participate in targeted poverty alleviation. Among them，in order to give full play to the role of the capital market and win the battle against poverty，in September 2016，the China Securities Regulatory Commission put forward the “Opinions of the China Securities Regulatory Commission on Giving Full Play to the Role of the Capital Market to Serve the National Poverty Alleviation Strategy”，which aims to make full use of capital market resources to support and encourage listed companies to fulfill their social responsibilities and serve the country's poverty alleviation strategy.

At the end of 2016，the Shanghai and Shenzhen Stock Exchanges fully refined the information disclosure requirements for listed companies' participation in targeted poverty alleviation，and required listed companies to report their participation in poverty alleviation in the form of a designated list in the annual report. With the government ‘s emphasis on poverty alleviation，the number of A － share listed companies participating in targeted poverty alleviation in China and their total investment have gradually increased. According to statistics in this paper，the total number of A － share listed companies participating in targeted poverty alleviation ( total investment) has increased from 566 (13. 81 billion yuan) in 2016 to 1， 126 (288 billion yuan) in 2019. Why are companies participating in targeted poverty alleviation and what are the economic consequences? The academic community has begun to pay attention to these issues.

Taking 2016 － 2018 Shanghai and Shenzhen A － share listed companies as a sample，this paper empirically tests the impact of companies' participation in targeted poverty alleviation on their innovation performance. The research results show that participation in targeted poverty alleviation has significantly improved the innovation output and innovation efficiency. After a series of robustness tests such as changing the variable measurement method，changing the model，using the placebo test and the PSM model to control endogenous problems，the conclusion still holds. Further mechanism test shows that participating in targeted poverty alleviation improves innovation performance by alleviating financing constraints，while resource effects (reducing debt financing costs and increasing tax incentives) and reputation effects ( increasing the number of positive media reports) are external financing effects for participating in targeted poverty alleviation. Finally，based on the analysis of heterogeneity at the macro － social level，the meso － market level，and the micro － firm level，the positive impact of participating in targeted poverty alleviation on corporate innovation mainly exists in firms with high local poverty alleviation pressure and poor capital market information environment and in non － state － owned enterprises. Through theoretical analysis and empirical testing，this paper not only enriches the relevant research in the field of targeted poverty alleviation and corporate innovation，but also has important enlightening significance in giving full play to the role of the capital market in serving the country’s poverty alleviation strategy，as well as the in － depth implementation of innovation － driven development strategies and giving full play to the main role of firms in technological innovation.

Keywords: Targeted Poverty Alleviation; Corporate Innovation; Financing Constraints; Resource Effect; Reputation Effect.