数字政府如何影响企业寻租——基于上市公司的实证研究

How Does Digital Government Influence Firms’ Rent-seeking——Empirical Research Based on Listed Companies

发展型政府在促进经济增长的同时,也会因过度干预市场,导致企业开展寻租活动。作为政府职能转型的重要内容,数字政府建设能否有效抑制企业的寻租行为便成为值得关注的问题。研究2015—2019年数字政府评估指数与当年全部A股上市企业数据发现,数字政府能显著抑制企业的寻租支出,其中数字政府信息公开层面的抑制效果较强,而政务服务能力的抑制效果较弱。而相对于国有企业,数字政府对民营企业寻租支出的抑制作用更强;进一步的分样本回归显示,数字政府对民营企业寻租支出的抑制作用显著地体现在壁垒较低的行业以及市场化程度较高的地区,因为上述范围内的民营企业不需要为维持行业地位或受限制的市场环境支付租金。

While a developmental government promotes economic growth, it also results in rent-seeking activities by enterprises due to excessive intervention into the market. As an important part of the transformation of government functions, whether digital government construction can effectively curb rent-seeking behavior of enterprises becomes a question worth testing. Using the Digital Government Assessment Index and the data of all A-share listed companies from 2015 to 2019, it is found that digital government can significantly inhibit rent-seeking expenditure of enterprises, with a stronger inhibitory effect of government transparency and a weaker inhibitory effect of government service capacity. On the other hand, the inhibitory effect of digital government on private enterprises’ rent-seeking expenditure is stronger than that of digital government on state-owned enterprises’ rent-seeking expenditure;further sub-sample regression shows that the inhibitory effect of digital government on private enterprises’ rent-seeking expenditure is significantly reflected in industries with lower barriers and in regions with a higher degree of marketization, because private enterprises in that scope do not need to pay the rent for maintaining their industry status or a restricted market environment.