The Impact of the Belt and Road Initiative on Chinese Firms'Digital Innovation
Based on the data of Chinese listed firms from 2009 to 2019,we measure firms'digital innovation level and further use the staggered Difference-in-Difference(DID)method to test the promotion impact of the BRI on firm digital innovation.Firstly,we find that the digital innovation level of Chinese listed firms showed an overall upward trend from 2009 to 2019.Sec-ondly,the DID results show that the BRI can significantly promote firms'digital innovation level.And this conclusion is still significantly valid after a series of robustness tests,including placebo test,parallel trend test and Bacon decomposition.In addition,from the perspective of mechanism,the BRI mainly improves the firms'digital innovation through three channels,easing the financing constraints,promoting cooperative innovation and strengthening the digital infrastructure construction.Finally,the heterogeneity analysis shows that the BRI plays a more significant role in promoting digital innovation for firms in emerging advantageous industries,in the central and western regions,and for non-state-owned firms.
The Belt and Road InitiativeDigital InnovationDigital Infrastructure Contruc-tionCollaborative Innovation
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
