数字金融与中小企业技术创新——来自新三板企业的证据

Digital Finance and SME’s Technological Innovation——Evidence from NEEQ Companies

本文从理论和实证两个方面研究了数字金融对中小企业技术创新的影响和机制。结果表明,我国数字金融的发展显著促进了中小企业技术创新。影响机制为:第一,数字金融通过提高销售收入、降低管理费用提高了企业的盈利水平。第二,数字金融通过降低借贷成本、改善借款结构使企业借款结构长期化,缓解了企业的信贷约束。第三,数字金融的支付、货币基金、保险、信用等业务功能均显著促进了企业技术创新。此外,数字金融对国有、民营、东部地区和规模小于样本中位数企业的技术创新均有显著影响。本文丰富了数字金融的相关文献,对于促进数字金融发展和中小企业技术创新的实践活动有一定启示意义。

As an important component of the digital economy,digital finance defines a novel path for the future development of the global financial sector.China’s digital finance has experienced a rapid growth over the past 5-10 years.During the same period,innovation has played an ever increasing role in promoting China’s economic growth.We know that financial environment is important for corporate innovations.As such,a natural question is whether and how China’s digital finance development affects the technological innovation in SMEs.Surprisingly,there are few existing empirical or theoretical studies in this regard.This paper attempts to fill this void by investigating the impacts of digital finance on the technological innovations in SMEs as well as the mechanisms through which it works,using the Digital Financial Inclusion Index by the Digital Finance Research Center of Peking University for NEEQ listed companies.The results indicate that the development of digital finance significantly promotes the technological innovations of SMEs.We uncover several potential channels.First,digital finance improves the profitability of the company by increasing the revenues and reducing the managerial costs.Second,digital finance eases the external financing constraints by lowering the cost of borrowings and bettering off the debt structure.More specifically,it is found that the share of long-term debt increases with the deepening of digital finance,which in turn facilitates the investment in long-term and risky projects such as R&D activities.Last but not least,it’s also found that different types of services in digital finance significantly promote technological innovation,such as the financial payment,funds,insurance,credit,and etc.Moreover,this paper shows that the effects exhibit spatial disequilibrium and heterogeneity,and this effect is weaker in the middle and western areas,meaning that a more balanced accessibility of digital finance is desired.The policy implications of this paper can be summarized as followed.Firstly,the government should give full supports for digital finance without neglecting the unbalanced development of digital finance across regions.Secondly,the channel study suggests that several related policies could be enacted at the discretion of the government to help improve the profitability of SMEs and ease the financing constraints facing the SMEs.