数字金融是否提高了城市创新质量?

Does Digital Finance Improve the Quality of Urban Innovation and Entrepreneurship?

在我国经济高质量发展的形势下,数字金融作为一种新型金融模式,弥补了传统金融体系在服务范围、信息获取等方面的不足,提升了金融服务的深度和广度,减少了交易成本。对于城市的创新发展来说,探究这种新型金融模式是否有助于促进城市的创新质量以及通过何种渠道来促进,均具有较强的现实意义。基于2011-2018年274个地级市面板数据,采用双向固定效应模型,分析数字金融对城市创新质量的影响、异质性,使用工具变量等方法进行稳健性检验,并采用中介效应模型分析内在机理。研究结果表明:第一,数字金融通过覆盖广度和使用深度有效促进城市的创新质量。第二,数字金融对于城市创新质量的影响会因为城市所在区域存在差异性:数字金融的发展提高了中东部地区城市的创新质量,但对于西部地区城市创新质量的促进作用还未显现。第三,数字金融对于城市创新质量的促进作用依赖于互联网设施建设,对于低互联网普及率的城市来说,这种促进作用并不明显。第四,从影响渠道分析,发现数字金融一方面通过提高城市金融发展水平,降低了研发机构的创新融资成本,有助于提升城市的创新质量;另一方面,数字金融通过提升居民消费水平,扩大了需求市场规模,激励了机构的创新意愿,继而带来城市创新质量的提升。

Under the requirements of high quality economic development in China,digital finance as a new financial model has made up for the deficiencies of traditional financial system in service scope,information acquisition and other aspects,greatly improving the depth and breadth of financial services and reducing transaction costs.For the innovative development of cities,it is of great practical significance to explore whether this new financial model can help to promote the quality of urban innovation and through which channels.Based on the panel data of 274 prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2018,this paper uses the two-way fixed effects model to analyze the impact and heterogeneity of digital finance on urban innovation quality,uses instrumental variables and other methods to test the robustness,and uses the mediating effects model to analyze the internal mechanism.The results show that:First,digital finance effectively promotes the innovation quality of cities through coverage breadth and use depth.Second,the impact of digital finance on the innovation quality of cities will be due to the differences in the regions where cities are located:the development of digital finance has improved the innovation quality of cities in the central and eastern regions,but its promoting effect on the innovation quality of cities in the western region has not yet emerged.Third,the promotion effect of digital finance on urban innovation quality depends on the construction of Internet facilities,which is not obvious for cities with low Internet penetration rate.Fourth,from the analysis of influence channels,it is found that on the one hand,digital finance reduces the innovation financing cost of R&D institutions by improving the level of urban financial development,and helps to improve the quality of urban innovation.On the other hand,by improving the consumption level of residents and expanding the scale of the demand market,digital finance stimulates the willingness of institutions to innovate,and then brings about the improvement of urban innovation quality.