数字化转型能提升企业出口产品质量吗

Can Digital Transformation Improve the Quality of Enterprises'Export Products?

本文采用文本分析法构建企业数字化转型水平,实证检验数字化转型对企业出口产品质量的影响及作用机制。研究发现:数字化转型能显著提高企业出口产品质量,在考虑内生性问题以及一系列稳健性检验后该结论依然成立;机制分析显示,数字化转型通过提高企业管理效率和人力资本水平进而促进出口产品质量;异质性分析发现,在管理层权力较大、高新技术企业和资本密集型企业中,数字化转型对出口产品质量的促进作用更为明显。进一步分析表明,数字化转型能降低企业与出口目的地之间的运输成本和信息成本,但出口目的地的经济规模不会影响数字化转型的作用效果。本文不仅揭示了数字化转型对企业出口产品质量的影响及作用机制,也为打破中国企业在全球技术链条“低端锁定”的僵局提供了微观经验,对提升出口企业国际竞争力和释放数字经济红利具有政策启示意义。

This paper adopts textual analysis to construct an index of digital transformation of enterprises and empirically examines the impact and mechanism of digital transformation on the quality of enterprises'export products.The research finds that:(1)Digital transformation significantly improves the quality of enterprises'export products,and this conclusion still holds after considering the endogeneity issue and conducting a series of robustness tests;(2)The mechanism analysis shows that digital transformation promotes the quality of export products by improving enterprises'management efficiency and the level of human capital;(3)Heterogeneity analysis reveals that in enterprises with higher managerial power,high-and new-tech enterprises,and capital-intensive enterprises,the promoting effect of digital transformation on product quality is more pronounced;(4)Further analysis indicates that digital transformation can reduce the transportation and information costs between enterprises and their export destinations,but the economic scale of the export destinations does not affect the effectiveness of digital transformation.This study uncovers the impact and mechanism of digital transformation on the quality of export products.It provides micro-level insights for breaking the deadlock of Chinese enterprises being locked in at the low end of the global technology chain.This has significant policy implications for enhancing the international competitiveness of exporting enterprises and reaping the benefits of the digital economy.