Digital finance and corporate innovation:Micro-Evidence from the digitalization of technology industries and traditional industries
China is at a critical juncture in its journey towards becoming a nation of innovation.The co-development of digital finance and the real economy has garnered significant attention.This paper utilizes a combination of panel data from prefecture-level cities between 1999 and 2021 and microeconomic data from Chinese databases.By integrating advanced technologies such as R language geographic coordinate systems and web scraping,we construct key indicators to empirically study the impact of digital finance on enterprise innovation from multiple perspectives.The findings reveal that the development of digital finance significantly enhances the level of enterprise innovation output and this conclusion has been validated through robust checks using panel negative binomial models and instrumental variable methods.Mechanism tests indicate that digital finance influences enterprise innovation through two primary mechanisms:supporting the industrialization of digital technology and digitizing traditional industries.Firstly,it directly promotes the rapid growth of innovative digital economy enterprises.Secondly,by enhancing information exchange,connectivity,and integration into a unified national market,it strengthens market competition and indirectly encourages traditional industries to increase their high-tech investments.Heterogeneity tests reveal that the positive impact of digital finance on enterprise innovation is not significant for state-owned and collective enterprises.Especially,recent advancements in industrial digital finance have benefited the innovation of high-tech enterprises.In this pivotal period of China's progression towards becoming an innovation-driven country,the findings of this study help to explain the inclusiveness of digital finance and address concerns about its support for the real economy.
digital financecorporate innovationindustrialization of digital technologydigitalization of traditional industries
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
