数字经济如何释放“创新红利”:理论机制与微观证据

How Does the Digital Economy Release Innovation Dividends?The Theoretical Mechanism and Microscopic Evidences

数字经济加速演进为创新驱动发展战略注入新动能,数字经济能否以及如何释放创新红利成为亟待解决的关键问题。基于2011-2019年中国地级市数字经济数据与上市公司微观数据,检验数字经济对企业创新绩效的微观影响效应和作用机制。研究发现:(1)数字经济发展能够显著促进企业创新绩效提升,表现为创新数量和创新质量双提升,但数字经济对企业创新数量的促进作用大于创新质量,在考虑内生性问题后该结论依然稳健;(2)机制检验结果表明,数字经济通过缓解融资约束、降低经营成本、促进知识扩散等方式向企业释放创新红利;(3)异质性检验结果显示,数字经济对国有企业创新绩效的促进作用强于非国有企业;企业数字化程度越高,数字经济创新效应越显著;中心城市企业从数字经济中获取的创新红利大于非中心城市企业。研究结论可为数字经济创新驱动效应提供微观层面数据支撑,对于我国利用数字经济创新红利夯实创新驱动发展战略具有重要意义。

The development of the digital economy has injected new momentum into the innovation-driven strategy,which raises the question of whether and how the digital economy will release innovation dividends.Most of the existing literature focuses on the macro perspective,and uses national or regional level data to explore the impact of digital economy development on innovation performance.However,these studies ignore the impact of digital economy development on micro enterprise innovation capability.As enterprises are the micro main body of innovation,it is particularly important to analyze how the digital economy development affects the innovation capability of enterprises.In view of this,the paper focuses on the micro effects of the digital economy.Firstly,it theoretically analyzes the internal mechanism of the impact of digital economy development on enterprise innovation performance.Secondly,drawing on the data of prefecture-level cities in China and the micro-data of listed companies from 2011 to 2019,it empirically studies the innovation effect of digital economy development and its mechanism.Thirdly,it applies the stepwise regression method to test the mediating effects of financing constraints,operating costs and knowledge diffusion.Finally,this paper examines the effects of heterogeneous factors,such as the nature of the enterprise,the degree of digitization and the city location of the enterprise on the innovation dividends of the digital economy.This paper has yielded some important results.First,the digital economy development can significantly promote the innovation performance of enterprises.Specifically,the digital economy development improves both the quantity and the quality of enterprise innovation,and the promotion effect is greater for innovation quantity than innovation quality.The instrumental variable method is used to carry out endogenous test,and the results show that the benchmark effects are still robust.Second,the mechanism test shows that the digital economy development can improve the quantity and quality of enterprise innovation by mitigating financial constraints,reducing operating costs and promoting knowledge diffusion.Third,the heterogeneity test shows that the relationship between digital economy development and enterprise innovation performance is influenced by the ownership,digitization degree and location of enterprises.More specifically,the promotion effect of digital economy development on innovation performance of state-owned enterprises is stronger than that of non-state-owned enterprises.The higher digitalization degree of enterprise is,the stronger the impact of digital economy development on innovation performance will be.The innovation dividends released by digital economy are greater for enterprises located in central cities than that in non-central cities.This paper has important theoretical contributions.Firstly,while previous studies focused on macro scale,this paper analyzes the impact of digital economy development on the enterprise innovation from the micro level,thus enriching the literature on micro effects of digital economy and providing empirical evidence for innovation effects of digital economy development.Secondly,this paper breaks through the generalization discussion of the mechanism of digital economy development on enterprise innovation in previous studies,and constructs a theoretical framework including financial constraints,operating costs and knowledge diffusion,unfolding the“black box”between digital economy development and enterprise innovation.Finally,this paper analyzes the heterogeneity at two levels of enterprise and region,and clarifies the boundary of digital economy's influence on enterprise innovation and deepens the relationship between digital economy development and enterprise innovation.The findings of this paper have certain practical implications.The government should further vigorously promote the development of the digital economy,deeply optimize the innovation environment of enterprises,and effectively relieve financial constraints,reduce operating costs,and promote knowledge diffusion,so as to fully tap the role of digital economy development in promoting micro enterprise innovation and consolidate the micro foundation of innovation driven strategy.At the same time,managers should recognize the importance of digital transformation,actively embrace digital technology,and constantly increase investment in digital transformation,so as to more effectively obtain the innovation bonus generated by the digital economy development.In addition,the innovation effect of the digital economy development has regional differences which suggests that the government should pay attention to the balanced development of central and non-central cities,especially accelerate the institutional reform of non-central cities,and effectively release the innovation dividend of the digital economy development.