价值链重塑视角下的中国企业对外直接投资和智能化

Chinese Firms’ OFDI and Intelligentization from the Perspective of GVCs Reshaping

对外直接投资能否帮助中国企业突破全球价值链的低端分工束缚和增加其对智能要素的使用,是一个有待回答的重要问题。本文采用经过匹配的2000—2013年中国制造业企业微观数据,结合双重差分因果识别策略,研究了对外直接投资对中国企业智能化的影响及其价值链重塑的传导路径。实证结果表明,对外直接投资对企业智能化总体上存在显著促进效应,该效应体现于企业以市场寻求、技术寻求和效率寻求为主体的对外直接投资上,且通过了双重差分估计的有效性要求及其他稳健性检验。并非所有的企业智能化都会受到对外直接投资的影响,非劳动密集型行业内规模越大、越成熟的国有企业智能化转型越受益于其对“一带一路”倡议沿线发达国家的对外直接投资。在影响机制上,对外直接投资通过价值链分工地位攀升推动了企业在生产部门和中间品研发部门的智能化转型,发挥了人与工业机器人在任务分配上的比较优势,从而实现“人机和谐”。

An interesting question in the literature is whether OFDI can help Chinese firms move up along the GVCs and intensify product “intelligentization.” Using a micro dataset consisting of Chinese manufacturing firms from 2000 to 2013, this paper empirically analyzes the causal impact of OFDI on firms’ intelligentization strategies and the channels through which such effects take place. The results from DID analyses suggest that OFDI increases industrial robots adoption among those firms whose oversea investment is market-seeking, technology-seeking, or efficiency-seeking. These baseline results are robust to alternative model specifications. For large-scale and matured firms in non-labor-intensive sectors, their increased intelligentization mainly benefits from the investment made in developed countries under “the Belt and Road” Initiative(BRI). Finally, we show that OFDI promotes intelligentization in the R&D and the manufacturing departments by moving firms up along the GVCs. This allows firms to maximize the comparative advantages of humans and industrial robots on task allocation and achieve “human-machine integration.”