“一带一路”倡议、数字化转型与中国企业创新

The Belt and Road Initiative,Digital Transformation,and Innovation of Chinese Enterprises

“一带一路”倡议问世十年,为沿线各国的经济发展作出了积极贡献,高水平的开放也为中国企业创新提供了机会。本文基于2009—2019年中国A股上市公司数据,采用文本挖掘和人工判断相结合的方法从微观层面对参与“一带一路”共建企业进行认定,构建多时点双重差分模型,深入考察“一带一路”倡议对企业创新的影响及作用机制。研究结果显示,“一带一路”倡议显著促进参与企业创新“增量提质”。此结论在经过平行趋势检验、内生性分析和一系列稳健性检验后依然成立。机制检验结果表明,“一带一路”倡议通过研发投入效应和创新网络溢出效应促进参与企业创新数量与质量提升,企业数字化转型正向调节“一带一路”倡议与参与企业创新数量和质量的关系。进一步分析发现,参与“一带一路”倡议对国有企业创新质量的促进作用强于非国有企业、对地区市场化水平较低的企业创新数量和质量的促进作用更明显;此外,“一带一路”倡议与企业数字化转型的协同还能促进高科技企业的关键核心技术创新。本文的研究结论为“一带一路”倡议推动中国企业创新提供了微观层面的证据,对中国深入实施创新驱动发展战略和推动“一带一路”高质量发展具有一定的政策启示意义。

Enterprise innovation is the key to achieving high-quality economic development,and opening up to the outside world fosters innovation.Since the proposal of the Belt and Road Initiative(BRI),it has achieved fruitful results,built a good external economic circulation for China,and made important contributions to promoting high-quality economic development under the“dual circulation”development paradigm.Therefore,whether and how the BRI affects the innovation of micro-enterprises under the new development pattern deserves further exploration.This paper uses a combination of text mining and manual assessment to identify the enterprises participating in the BRI construction at the micro level based on the data of A-share listed companies from 2009 to 2019 in China.It also constructs a multi-period DID model to examine the impact and mechanism of the BRI on enterprise innovation.The findings show that the BRI significantly improves the quantity and quality of innovation of participating enterprises.This conclusion still holds after parallel trend tests,endogenous analysis,and robustness tests.Mechanism tests show that the improvement in quantity and quality is achieved through the effect of research and development investment and innovation network spillover,and digital transformation of enterprises positively regulates the relationship between the BRI and the quantity and quality of enterprise innovation.Further analysis shows that the BRI exerts a more pronounced influence on enhancing the innovation quality of state-owned enterprises compared to non-state-owned ones and plays a more obvious role in improving the quantity and quality of innovation of enterprises in regions with lower levels of marketization.In addition,the synergy between participation in the BRI and the digital transformation of enterprises can also promote the key and core technology innovation of high-tech enterprises.The potential contributions of this paper are as follows.First,it deeply analyzes the mechanism of the BRI’s impact on enterprise innovation based on the five-pronged approach,which is conducive to comprehensively and objectively understanding the microeconomic effect of the BRI on enterprise innovation.Second,it establishes a multi-period DID model to evaluate the micro effects of the BRI,and optimizes the problem that the traditional DID method fails to measure the gradual impact of the BRI’s shock on micro-enterprises.Third,based on the perspectives of allocation,absorption,and integration of internal and external innovation resources,this paper innovatively identifies the boundary effect of digital transformation of enterprises on the relationship between the BRI and enterprise innovation.Finally,it deeply discusses the synergy effect of the BRI and digital transformation of enterprises on enterprises’key and core technology innovation,providing important policy enlightenment for China to achieve greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology.