金融科技“赋能”与企业绿色创新——基于信贷配置与监督的视角

Fintech “Enabling” and Enterprise Green Innovation: From the Perspectives of Credit Allocation and Credit Supervision

金融科技是我国经济社会数字化和智能化发展的重要手段。在培育经济增长新动力的导向下,金融科技对企业绿色创新有何影响?文章利用2011-2018年A股上市公司数据,探究了金融科技“赋能”对企业绿色创新的影响及其机制。研究发现,金融科技发展能够显著促进企业的绿色创新活动,主要表现为绿色专利数量的显著增加,这一结论在考虑内生性问题后依然稳健。机制分析表明,金融科技既能在“事前”提高绿色信贷配置效率,促进绿色信贷供给,又能在“事后”充分发挥监督作用,提升绿色投资效率。异质性分析发现,金融科技对绿色创新的促进作用主要集中在环境规制水平较高和金融机构数量较多的地区、高污染行业以及融资约束程度较高的企业中。因此,在新发展格局下,推动金融科技对绿色金融“赋能”,激发企业的绿色创新活力,对于实现经济高质量发展具有重要意义。

In recent years, China has constructed the green financing system, in which green credit is the largest component, to stimulate the green innovation of enterprises. However, green credit is plagued by information asymmetry in the allocation process. Since the beginning of new technology revolution, Fintech has developed rapidly and its role in alleviating information asymmetry provides better financing environment for green credit to promote green innovation. This paper discusses the impact of Fintech on enterprise green innovation. During the critical period when China’s economy is stepping into green transformation, clarifying the relationship between them is of great practical significance to the business deepening of financial institutions, the green transformation and upgrading of industries, and the realization of China’s strategic goals of“carbon peak” and “carbon neutrality”.Using the data of A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2018, this paper measures the regional Fintech level by the number of Fintech companies in prefecture-level cities with standardized GDP, and explores the micro enterprise effect of Fintech “enabling” from the perspective of green innovation. The results show that:First, Fintech can significantly promote the green innovation of enterprises. The higher the development level of regional Fintech, the more green patent output of enterprises. This conclusion is still robust after using the instrumental variable regression and DID estimation to alleviate endogeneity. Second, Fintech mainly promotes the green innovation activities of enterprises by easing credit rationing and increasing credit supervision,which is reflected in the significant improvement of the allocation efficiency of green credit and the effectiveness of green investment efficiency. Third, in regions with a high level of environmental regulations and a large number of financial institutions, highly polluting industries and enterprises with high financing constraints, the role of Fintech in promoting green innovation is more obvious.Based on the above findings, this paper provides the following policy insights: First, policymakers should improve the regulation design of Fintech. Second, financial institutions should integrate Fintech and their own business. Third, the government of each region should invest more on Fintech infrastructure. Moreover, regulators should create an inclusive and prudent regulatory mechanism for Fintech innovation.This paper makes the following contributions: First, a lot of studies focus on the incentive of environmental regulations on green innovation. However, this paper explores the impact of this pure market-oriented factor on green innovation, and enriches the research literature on green innovation. Second, this paper improves the measurement of Fintech, so that the measurement error is smaller and the empirical result is more reliable. Third, based on the micro banking theory, this paper verifies the “enabling” effect of Fintech on green innovation, which can not only improve the efficiency of credit allocation, but also strengthen the postloan supervision. Fourth, this paper explores the heterogeneity from region, industry and enterprise, and discusses the effect of Fintech on green innovation from multiple levels.