数字化转型能否提升企业出口韧性

Does Digital Transformation Improve Firms’ Export Resilience

在外部环境复杂多变的背景下,数字技术与实体经济的深度融合能否增强企业出口韧性、实现对外贸易逆势突围成为极为重要的议题。本文使用中国海关数据和上市企业数据,以2008年全球金融危机导致的负面出口冲击作为研究背景,利用文本分析法构建企业数字化转型的综合指标,考察数字化转型对企业出口韧性的影响及作用机制。实证结果表明,数字化转型能够显著提升企业出口韧性。该结论在进行一系列稳健性检验以及利用“下一代互联网示范城市”构建工具变量后依然成立。机制检验揭示,数字化转型主要通过促进出口多样化和提升出口产品质量来增强企业出口韧性。异质性分析显示,数字化转型对国有企业、大规模企业以及有政治关联企业出口韧性的提升效应更强。进一步研究发现,数字化转型对企业抵御风险和出口恢复的程度都具有显著的提高作用。本文研究结论揭示了数字化转型对企业出口韧性的提升效应,为实现高水平对外开放,推进贸易强国建设提供了决策依据。

In the background of a complex and changing external environment, whether the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy improves firms’ export resilience and achieves breakthrough in foreign trade against the difficult situation has become an extremely important issue. Based on the data of China Customs database and listed firms, taking the negative export shock brought about by the 2008 global financial crisis as the research context, this paper constructs a comprehensive index of firms’ digital transformation by using text analysis, and examines the impact of digital transformation on firms’ export resilience and the mechanism of action. The empirical results show that digital transformation significantly improves firms’ export resilience. This finding still holds after a series of robustness tests and the use of the instrumental variable estimation approach based on the “Next-generation Internet Demonstration Cities”. The mechanism test reveals that digital transformation improves firms’ export resilience mainly through promoting export diversification and improving the quality of export products. The heterogeneity analysis shows that digital transformation has a stronger positive effect on export resilience of state-owned enterprises, large-scale enterprises and politically connected enterprises. Furthermore, we find that digital transformation significantly enhances the degree of enterprises’ risk resistance and export recovery. Our conclusion reveals the positive effect of digital transformation on firms’ export resilience, and has important policy implications for facilitating high-level opening up and promoting the construction of a powerful trading nation.