数字化转型与企业交易成本

Digital Transformation and Enterprise Transaction Costs

采用基于机器学习的文本分析方法和A股上市公司年报中关于数字化转型的关键词词频统计来构建数字化转型指标,本文分析了数字化转型对企业交易成本的影响。研究发现,数字化转型有助于降低企业交易成本。一系列稳健性检验表明该结论是可信的。同时,本文将数字化转型指标分解为区块链、大数据、人工智能、云计算技术以及数字化应用等五个子指标,检验结果也证明了数字化转型对企业交易成本抑制效应的存在。进一步的分析表明,数字化转型对信息搜寻成本、契约签订成本和契约履行成本等不同类型的交易成本均有抑制作用,而且高新技术企业和非数字经济行业的相关企业能更好地利用数字化转型降低其交易成本。

We use the text analysis method based on machine learning and the frequency statistics of keywords about digital transformation in the annual reports of A-share listed companies to construct digital transformation indicators of enterprises,and analyze the impact of digital transformation on enterprise transaction costs.The finding is that digital transformation can help reduce enterprise transaction costs.A series of robustness tests confirm that the conclusion is credible.Also,we decompose the index of digital transformation into five sub-indicators,such as block chain,big data,artificial intelligence,cloud computing and digital application,and the test results also confirm the existence of transaction cost suppression effect of enterprise digital transformation.Further analyses reveal that digital transformation has an inhibitory effect on different types of transaction costs,such as information search costs,contract signing costs,and contract fulfillment costs,and high-tech enterprises and related enterprises in non-digital economy industries can make better use of digital transformation to reduce their transaction costs.