数字化转型能否助力制造业“脱虚向实”?——基于企业投资行为的经验证据

Can Digital Transformation Promote Manufacturing to Decrease Financialization?——Evidence from Corporate Investment Behavior

本文以2012-2021年A股制造业上市公司为样本,从投资规模与结构偏向两个角度考察了数字化转型对企业实体投资和金融投资的影响。研究发现,数字化转型会加大企业的实体投资规模和金融投资规模,而规模的不同比例增长揭示了企业投资结构偏向的转变,表现为伴随企业数字化转型的加深,企业投资将由偏向金融领域转为偏向实体领域。针对企业投资结构偏向的转变,本文开展了进一步的研究,结果表明,存在全要素生产率、融资约束的非线性中介效应,使得企业数字化转型达到一定程度后,表现出实体投资对金融投资的“挤出效应”;数字化转型对企业投资结构偏向的影响在市场集中度、企业所有权性质、行业技术水平方面表现出异质性特征。本文的研究证实,数字化转型带来了企业实体投资和金融投资的共同增长,宏观上实现了实体经济与虚拟经济的共同发展,而转型初期投资的金融化偏向导致虚拟经济发展较快,但当转型达到一定程度后,投资的实体化偏向可有效抑制经济的“脱实向虚”,助力实体企业重回本源、深耕主业,实现高质量发展。

This article takes A-share manufacturing listed companies from 2012 to 2021 as a sample,and examines the impact of digital transformation on corporate physical investment and financial investment from two perspectives:investment scale and structural bias.Research has found that digital transformation will increase the physical and financial investment scale of enterprises,and the different proportion of growth in scale reveals a shift in the investment structure of enterprises.This is manifested by the deepening of digital transformation,and enterprise investment will shift from a focus on the financial sector to a focus on the physical sector.In response to the shift in investment structure of enterprises,this article has conducted further research,and the results show that there is a non-linear mediating effect of total factor productivity and financing constraints,which leads to the“crowding out effect”of physical investment on financial investment when the digital transformation of enterprises reaches a certain level.The impact of digital transformation on the investment structure of enterprises shows heterogeneous characteristics in terms of market concentration,ownership nature,and industry technology level.The research in this article confirms that digital transformation has brought about a common growth in both physical and financial investment of enterprises,achieving the joint development of the real economy and the virtual economy at the macro level.Nevertheless,the financialization bias of investment in the early stages of transformation has led to the rapid development of the virtual economy.However,when the transformation reaches a certain degree,the materialization bias of investment can effectively suppress the“detachment from reality to virtuality”of the economy,help physical enterprises return to their roots,deepen their main business,and achieve high-quality development.