Abstract:

Digital finance, as a new type of financial service industry, whether it can spur enterprise innovation and through what mechanism can digital finance empower enterprise innovation, is an advanced theory and practical issue that is highly concerned by the government, industry, and science circles and urgently needs to be answered. Based on the cross-hierarchy structure of “prefecture-city-enterprise”, this paper matches the data of China’s listed manufacturing enterprises with the Digital Financial Inclusion Index of Beijing University from 2011 to 2018, and theoretically and empirically tests the impact of the development of digital finance on enterprise innovation and the possible mechanism role of risk-taking in it. The results show that the development of digital finance can help spur innovation in China’s listed manufacturing companies. Risk-taking plays a partial mediation role in the process of enabling enterprises to innovate by the development of digital finance, that is, the development of digital finance encourages enterprises to participate in innovation activities more actively by improving the level of risk-taking of enterprises. The mediating mechanism of risk-taking is more obvious in non-state-owned enterprises, small enterprises, and external capital-dependent enterprises. The coverage breadth of digital finance plays a major role in the effect of risk-taking mechanism of the development of digital finance on enterprise innovation. This paper provides an empirical evidence for the first time that regional digital finance development can affect the innovation behavior of micro-enterprises through the risk-taking mechanism at different levels, which has a great theoretical significance for opening the “mechanism black box” of digital finance influencing enterprise innovation.

Key words: digital finance development, enterprise innovation, risk-taking, mediation

摘要：

数字金融作为一种新型金融服务业态，能否以及通过何种机制赋能企业创新是政产学三界都高度关注且亟待解答的前沿理论与实践议题。基于“地级市-企业”的跨层级数据结构，将2011~2018年北京大学数字普惠金融指数与中国制造业上市企业数据进行匹配，理论分析和实证检验数字金融发展对企业创新的影响以及风险承担在其中可能发挥的机制作用。研究结果表明：数字金融发展有助于激励中国制造业上市企业创新；风险承担在数字金融发展赋能企业创新的过程中起到部分中介作用，即数字金融发展通过提高企业风险承担水平进而激励企业更为积极地投身创新活动；风险承担的中介机制作用在非国有企业、小企业以及外部资金依赖型企业中表现得更为明显；覆盖广度在数字金融发展影响企业创新的风险承担机制中发挥了主要作用。本研究为宏观数字金融发展可以通过风险承担机制跨层级影响微观企业创新行为提供了直接经验证据，对打开数字金融影响企业创新的“机制黑箱”具有重要理论意义，对政府有关部门和企业更好地利用数字金融新业态赋能企业创新也具有政策启示作用。

关键词: 数字金融发展, 企业创新, 风险承担, 中介机制