| 祝树金,申志轩,文茜,段凡.经济政策不确定性与企业数字化战略：效应与机制[J].数量经济技术经济研究,2023,(5):24-45 | | 经济政策不确定性与企业数字化战略：效应与机制 | | Economic Policy Uncertainty and Corporate Digital Strategy: Effects and Mechanisms | | | | DOI： | | 中文关键词: 经济政策 不确定性 数字化转型 经营成本 经营风险 | | 英文关键词: Economic Policy Uncertainty Digital Transformation Operating Cost Operating Risk | | 基金项目:本文得到国家社会科学基金重大项目（22&ZD100）、国家自然科学基金面上项目（72173040）、国家自然科学基金青年基金项目（72103062）和湖南省研究生科研创新项目（CX20210405）的联合资助。 | | | 中文摘要: | | 在不确定性常态化背景下，企业数字化赋能经济高质量发展的作用日益凸显。理论上，企业数字化转型兼具“降本增效”的功能，能够有效应对经济政策不确定性的负面影响。本文考察经济政策不确定性上升是否会影响企业数字化转型，研究发现，经济政策不确定性每提高1个标准差，企业数字化转型程度平均提高16.32%。机制检验表明，经济政策不确定性上升通过提高企业的经营成本和经营风险，进而对企业数字化转型产生倒逼作用。进一步分析表明，企业数字化转型能够化解经济政策不确定性上升所导致的经营成本和经营风险的负向冲击，且效果优于金融化和现金持有等财务策略。此外，对于成本、风险转嫁能力较低的企业，在经济政策不确定性上升时进行数字化转型的意愿更强。相较于行业间，数字化转型在行业内的溢出效应加强了经济政策不确定性对企业数字化转型的正向作用。本文揭示了经济政策不确定性作用于企业数字化转型的内在逻辑，为企业以降成本和去风险为目的采取数字化战略的理论推断提供了经验证据。 | | 英文摘要: | | Economic policy uncertainty is an inevitable issue in economic development in all countries. As economic policy uncertainty currently persists and tends to increase, companies reflect on how to better cope with the costs and risk entailed by shocks in the long run. In order to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty, companies have adopted several countermeasures, including holding more cash assets, investing more in financial assets, or expanding abroad. However, these strategies do not involve changes in organizational structure and the improvement of core competitive advantages, thus making it difficult to improve the ability of enterprises to cope with economic policy uncertainty at the root.In essence, uncertainty stems from limited cognitive ability under information constraints. At the same time, the digital transformation of enterprises can resolve the uncertainty of the system with automatic data flows based on the application of data and algorithms. More importantly, digital transformation can optimize enterprises' business management and business processes, entailing disruptive innovation and change. Clearly, digital transformation is expected to have a more profound and widespread impact on enterprises than the reform of their operational and financial decisions.Against the backdrop of economic policy uncertainty, the potential benefits of digitizing production and business processes and organizational management provide a strong incentive for companies to accelerate digital transformation. On the one hand, enterprises can take advantage of information after digital transformation to develop user value-oriented product competition strategies and, then, respond to the negative impact of increased operating costs by improving resource allocation efficiency. On the other hand, digital transformation can break the innovation boundaries of traditional enterprises and fundamentally improve their product innovation capabilities, thus enhancing their core advantages in a highly competitive environment. This means that digital transformation allows cost reduction and efficiency enhancement, which can help enterprises effectively cope with the impact of operating costs and business risks caused by economic policy uncertainty. Based on these considerations, this paper aims to examine how economic policy uncertainty affects the digital transformation of enterprises and to answer the following two questions: does the increase of economic policy uncertainty force enterprises to undergo digital transformation? Does firms' digital transformation effectively counteract the negative impact of increased costs and risks caused by economic policy uncertainty?Specifically, this paper identifies and examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty on firms' digital transformation by selecting A-share listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen from 2010 to 2020. It is found that for every 1 standard deviation increase in economic policy uncertainty, the degree of digital transformation of enterprises increases by 16.32% on average. This confirms that the “winner effect” is higher than the “prevention effect” when companies face economic policy uncertainty. In fact, firms are more likely to value the lucrative returns (opportunities) in the market and show a higher willingness to transform digitally. The results of the mechanism test show that the increase in economic policy uncertainty pushes back the digital transformation of enterprises by increasing their operating costs and risks. To demonstrate that firms are motivated to undertake digital transformation in response to the operating cost and operational risk shocks caused by economic policy uncertainty, this paper combines a two-stage model to analyze the hedging effect of digital transformation driven by economic policy uncertainty on cost and risk shocks, which in turn confirms the cost reduction and de-risking functions of digital transformation. In addition, this paper examines alternative strategies for firms to hedge against economic policy uncertainty shocks based on financialization and cash holding perspectives, finding that financialization and cash holding are difficult to hedge against cost and risk shocks caused by economic policy uncertainty in the long run, and further confirming that digital transformation is a better coping strategy for firms in the context of economic policy uncertainty. The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that firms' cost and risk shifting capabilities influence the effect of economic policy uncertainty on firms' digital transformation; in particular, those firms with stronger cost and risk shifting capabilities face fewer economic policy uncertainty shocks and, thus, present a lower willingness to digitally transform. Finally, considering the strong spillover effect of digital technology, this paper further examines the moderating effect of intra-industry and inter-industry digital transformation on economic policy uncertainty, and finds that there is a spillover effect of digital transformation of other firms in the industry, which further strengthens the impact of economic policy uncertainty on firms' digital transformation, while the spillover effect of inter-industry digital transformation is not significant. This may be due to the fact that enterprises in the same industry face more evident competitive pressure, and if other enterprises cannot learn or learn from digital technologies to achieve innovation in business models and production technologies, their products will continue to weaken their competitive position in the market, and may eventually be eliminated from the market. While the digital transformation of inter-industry enterprises can achieve a synergistic development of industries through e.g., industrial linkages, it is more difficult for inter-industry digital transformation to influence the motivation of other industries toward digital transformation, because it does not directly affect the competitive intensity of other industries.The results of this paper have certain policy implications for the government. In the context of rapid changes in external macroeconomic policies, the government should focus on the risks arising from economic policy uncertainty and avoid frequent changes in economic policies. Moreover, considering the relatively weak motivation of some enterprises for digital transformation at present, the government should implement specific policies to eliminate enterprises' concerns toward digital transformation and eliminate their concerns about digital transformation. In parallel, enterprises should accelerate their digital transformation, so as to improve their economic resilience and grasp the challenges and opportunities brought by economic policy uncertainty. Since the positive effect of digital transformation benefits from enterprises' own ability to apply digital technology, these should effectively improve their own digital transformation capabilities, so as to maximize the dividends of digital transformation, for example, by hiring related professionals to improve their ability to apply digital technology. | | 查看全文 相关附件： 下载数据代码附录 |
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