摘要
促进资本自由充分流动和合理配置,是全国统一大市场建设的关键环节。毋庸置疑,数字经济是助推资本自由充分流动的重要动能。本文利用上市公司异地投资数据以及母子公司生产关系信息,从规模、模式和方向三个维度分析了数字经济发展对资本跨城市非对称流动的影响。研究表明,数字经济发展的作用包括:第一,显著促进本城市企业的对外投资和外地资本的进入,但对资本流出的促进作用相对更大;第二,同时促进市场扩张型、跨行业型以及分工型资本的非对称流动,对生产型、销售型和研发型的资本流动存在积极作用,但会限制加工型投资的流入;第三,对资本跨区域流动的影响呈现出明显的“数字鸿沟”现象——本城市与数字经济水平更高的城市之间资本互动的增加明显超过与数字经济水平较低的城市之间的联动。进一步的机制分析表明,母子公司所在城市的数字经济发展对母公司的融资约束和委托代理成本具有非对称性影响,而两地之间的数字鸿沟会降低企业的异地投资效率。本文研究对于全面理解数字经济发展对资本流动的影响、在数字经济背景下促进全国统一大市场建设、加快发展新质生产力以及构建新发展格局具有重要的理论和政策价值。
In 2022,China’s Unified National Market strategy was introduced to unify regulations,enhance infrastructure,and integrate resource,commodity,and service markets while ensuring fair oversight and minimizing market distortions.Ensuring free and efficient capital flows and allocation is key to building a unified national market.Along with the Fourth Industrial Revolution,the digital economy has reshaped production,circulation,distribution,and consumption.Technologies such as AI,big data,and blockchain have reduced geographic constraints,enabling longdistance capital transfers at lower costs.These advancements have sparked debates on whether digitalization eliminates distance or merely reshapes global economic interactions.Obviously,the digital economy drives free and efficient capital flows,and reexamining capital flow patterns in the digital era is beneficial for advancing a unified national market.We construct a“city pair-year”balanced panel dataset using 84,000 on nonlocal investments of Chinese listed companies from 2009 to 2019 and manually identify the production relationship between subsidiaries and parent companies.Then,we use the instrumental variable method to empirically examine the capital flow effects of the digital economy development from three dimensions:the scale,mode,and direction of cross-regional capital flows.The main findings are as follows.First,the digital economy development boosts outbound investments by local firms and attracts external capital inflows,but its effect on capital outflows is stronger.Heterogeneity analysis shows that with the development of the digital economy,there is a significant increase in capital flows in the secondary and tertiary industries,capital-and technology-intensive industries,as well as upstream and downstream industries of the digital economy.Second,the development of the digital economy has a universal and differentiated promoting effect on the asymmetric flow of different types of capital.Among them,the promoting effect on cross-industry investment is the greatest,followed by market-expansion and industrial-division investment.Further subdividing the industrial-division investment,the digital economy development has a significant promoting effect on the outflow and inflow of capital for production,sales,and research and development,but will limit the inflow of processing capital.Third,the development of the digital economy creates a digital divide in cross-regional capital flows:capital interactions between a city and more digitally developed cities increase significantly more than those between the same city and less digitally developed cities.Fourth,firm-level analysis shows that the digital economy development in cities where parent and subsidiary companies are located asymmetrically affects financing constraints and agency costs,explaining the asymmetric cross-regional capital flows.Moreover,the digital divide reduces the efficiency of nonlocal investments.The main contributions of this study are as follows.Firstly,focusing on the characteristics of capital flows in the digital economy era,this paper comprehensively analyzes the impact of spatial heterogeneity in the digital economy development on asymmetric cross-regional capital flows from three perspectives:scale,mode,and direction,enriching the literature on the digital economy development and cross-regional capital flows.Secondly,it uncovers the key micro-level mechanisms using parent-subsidiary data.It tests how digital development in both capital-sending and receiving regions affects firms’financing constraints and agency costs,explaining why capital flows remain asymmetric.It also explores how digitalization shapes corporate activities like production,sales,and R&D,influencing different investment strategies.Additionally,it examines how the digital divide between cities where parent and subsidiary companies are located affects subsidiaries,shedding light on region-based capital flow imbalances.The exploration of the above micro mechanisms not only provides micro support for a deeper understanding of the capital flow characteristics in the digital economy era but also enriches the relevant literature on micro firm investment decisions.Thirdly,in terms of policy implications,this paper analyzes the roles of market integration,market size,geographical distance,and administrative boundaries,further expanding the research boundary of the impact of the digital economy development on capital flows.These studies have important theoretical significance for how to more effectively promote the construction of a unified national market,accelerate the development of new quality productive forces,and construct a new development pattern in the digital economy era.Finally,the six dimensions and 19 indicators of the digital economy indicator system constructed in this paper,as well as the cross-regional investment and production relationship data,provide useful references for further exploration of the digital economy development,firm nonlocal investment,regional industrial division,and other related research.
作者
孙伟增
司璐
吕越
SUN Weizeng;SI Lu;LYU Yue(Joint Research Institute,Nanjing Audit University;School of Economics,Central University of Finance and Economics;School of International Trade and Economics,University of International Business and Economics)
出处
《经济研究》
北大核心
2025年第3期69-86,共18页
Economic Research Journal
基金
国家自然科学基金面上项目(72274228、72073025)
国家社会科学基金重大项目(21&ZD098)
北京社会科学基金青年学术带头人项目(24DTR021)的资助。
关键词
数字经济
资本流动
企业投资模式
全国统一大市场
投资多元化
Digital Economy
Capital Flows
Firm Investment Pattern
A Unified National Market
Investment Diversification
