数字时代下普惠金融对创业的影响研究——来自中国家庭微观调查的证据

The impact of inclusive finance on entrepreneurship in the digital age:Evidence from Chinese household micro survey

中央深化金融供给侧结构性改革的重点之一是解决中小微企业“融资难,融资贵”问题,以数字技术驱动金融的高质量供给,使资金更多流向小微企业、个体工商户.本文运用中国数字普惠金融指数和中国居民收入调查数据,研究发现数字普惠金融可以提升创业概率,其中信贷业务对创业的促进作用最大.机制分析表明,数字普惠金融对创业的影响渠道是缓解个体融资约束,特别是低收入群体和传统金融发展落后地区中表现尤甚.但是上述作用影响存在地区间不平衡不充分问题,只集中在经济发达、市场化程度高的地区.其次,异质性分析发现,在人们之间信任程度越低、风险偏好越高时,数字普惠金融对创业的促进作用越弱.此外,本文还发现数字普惠金融存在“数字鸿沟”现象,其对受教育程度低和年老的个体创业的促进作用影响更小.上述发现表明数字普惠金融有助于缓解民营企业融资困境,但是其经济效应存在局限性.本文的政策建议是,在推进数字普惠金融政策时,要完善地区政策配套实施,因地制宜,推动金融同经济的均衡发展,为畅通国内国际大循环提供有力的金融支持.

The unbalanced and insufficient development of finance has caused the financing problem for private enterprises,which has become one of the key issues that the central government will tackle in deepening the supply-side structural reform.The government aims to drive high-quality financial supply with digital technology,so that more funds can flow to small and micro enterprises.The paper matches an index of digital financial inclusion with data from the Chinese Household Income Project.The empirical results show that digital inclusive finance promotes entrepreneurship,with credit playing the greatest role in promoting entrepreneurship.Mechanism analysis shows that the influence channel of digital inclusive finance on entrepreneurship is to ease individual financing constraints,especially among low-income groups and regions with backward traditional financial development.However,this paper also finds that the impacts of digital inclusive finance have the problem of regional imbalance,and the positive impacts are only concentrated in areas with developed economies and high marketization.In addition,the heterogeneous analysis finds that the effect of digital inclusive finance is weaker in places where people are less likely to trust each other or people are more adventurous.Moreover,there is a digital division phenomenon in digital financial inclusion,which has a weaker impact on the entrepreneurship for individuals with lower education and older age.Overall,digital inclusive finance can alleviate the financing difficulties of private enterprises,but there are limitations in its inclusiveness.The paper suggests that the government should advance an inclusive financing system as well as implement specific regional policies for different level of economic development to promote the balanced development of finance and economy,leading to provide strong financial support of a“dual circulation”development.