The Impact of Financial Technology on the New Quality Productive Forces of Chinese Enterprises

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Against the backdrop of technological transformation and industrial upgrading, enterprise-level new quality productive forces （NQPF） have become an important foundation for China’s high-quality development. As a technology-enabled form of financial innovation, financial technology （FinTech） may reshape firms’ external financing environment by lowering information frictions, improving credit allocation, and facilitating more efficient resource matching. Using a firm-year panel of Chinese A-share firms covering 2015–2024, this dissertation examines whether FinTech enhances NQPF, through which channels this effect operates, and under what conditions it becomes stronger or weaker. The empirical design proceeds from four dimensions: the baseline effect, transmission mechanisms, moderating conditions, and heterogeneous responses across firm groups. The main regression adopts a two-way fixed-effects framework. Technological innovation and investment efficiency are used to test the internal channels through which FinTech may be transformed into productive capacity. Digital transformation, ESG performance, managerial myopia, analyst coverage, and environmental regulation are introduced to capture the conditional features of the FinTech–NQPF relationship. Additional analyses are conducted to assess robustness, including alternative measures of key variables, lagged FinTech, the removal of observations from 2020 to 2022, and standard errors clustered at the city level. The empirical evidence shows that FinTech is positively associated with NQPF. Mechanism tests indicate that this effect is partly realized by promoting technological innovation and improving investment efficiency. The moderation results further reveal that digital transformation, ESG performance, analyst coverage, and environmental regulation reinforce the FinTech effect, whereas the interaction involving managerial myopia is not statistically significant. The heterogeneity tests show that the effect is more evident among state-owned enterprises, large firms, and firms located in non- eastern regions. This dissertation contributes to firm-level research on NQPF by introducing FinTech into the analysis of its formation process. The findings suggest that FinTech should be understood not only as an innovation in financial services, but also as an external enabling condition that supports productive upgrading by improving innovation incentives, resource allocation, and contextual adaptability. The results also provide policy and managerial implications for optimizing the FinTech environment, strengthening firms’ innovation and investment efficiency, and advancing the development of NQPF.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• CHAPTER 1. Introduction 1
• 1.1 Research Background 1
• 1.2 Research Objectives and Significance 3
• 1.2.1 Research Objectives 3
• 1.2.2 Theoretical Significance 4
• 1.2.3 Practical Significance 4
• 1.3 Research Approach, Research Content, and Research Methods 5
• 1.3.1 Research Content 5
• 1.3.2 Research Methods 7
• 1.3.3 Technology Roadmap 7
• 1.4 Research Contributions and Innovations 10
• CHAPTER 2. Related Concepts, Theoretical Foundations, and Literature Review 12
• 2.1 Definition of Core Concepts 12
• 2.1.1 Financial Technology 12
• 2.1.2 New Quality Productive Forces of Enterprises 14
• 2.2 Theoretical Foundations 17
• 2.2.1 Financial Innovation Theory 18
• 2.2.2 Information Asymmetry Theory 18
• 2.2.3 Innovation-Driven Theory 20
• 2.2.4 Sustainable Development Theory 21
• 2.3 Literature Review 22
• 2.3.1 Research on Financial Technology. 22
• 2.3.2 Research on New Quality Productive Forces 29
• 2.3.3 Research on Enterprise Technological Innovation 36
• 2.3.4 Research on Enterprise Investment Efficiency 41
• 2.3.5 Research on Enterprise Digital Transformation 45
• 2.3.6 Research on Corporate ESG Performance 47
• 2.3.7 Research on Managerial Myopia 52
• 2.3.8 Research on Analyst Coverage 56
• 2.3.9 Research on Environmental Regulation 60
• CHAPTER 3. Research Hypotheses 63
• 3.1 Financial Technology and Firm-Level NQPF 63
• 3.2 Mediating Mechanisms between Financial Technology and Enterprise-level NQPF 66
• 3.2.1 The Mediating Role of Enterprise Technological Innovation 66
• 3.2.2 The Mediating Role of Enterprise Investment Efficiency 69
• 3.3 Moderating Mechanisms in the FinTech–NQPF Relationship 71
• 3.3.1 The Moderating Role of Enterprise Digital Transformation 71
• 3.3.2 The Moderating Role of Corporate ESG Performance 75
• 3.3.3 The Moderating Role of Managerial Myopia 78
• 3.3.4 The Moderating Role of Analyst Coverage 81
• 3.3.5 The Moderating Role of Environmental Regulation 84
• CHAPTER 4. Empirical Research Design 88
• 4.1 Data Construction and Source Matching 88
• 4.2 Variable Measurement and Definitions 88
• 4.2.1 Independent Variable 88
• 4.2.2 Dependent Variable 89
• 4.2.3 Mediating Variables 91
• 4.2.4 Moderating Variables 92
• 4.2.5 Control Variables 95
• 4.3 Research Models 97
• 4.3.1 Baseline Regression Model 97
• 4.3.2 Mediation Models 97
• 4.3.3 Moderation Model 98
• CHAPTER 5. Hypothesis Testing and Discussion of Results 100
• 5.1 Descriptive Statistics 100
• 5.2 Correlation Analysis 101
• 5.3 Multicollinearity Tests 103
• 5.4 Analysis of Baseline Regression Results 104
• 5.5 Endogeneity and Robustness Tests 107
• 5.5.1 Alternative Measurement of FinTech 108
• 5.5.2 Alternative Outcome Measure 108
• 5.5.3 Lagged FinTech 109
• 5.5.4 Excluding Observations from Special Years 109
• 5.5.5 City-Clustered Standard Errors 109
• 5.6 Mediation Effect Analysis 110
• 5.7 Moderation Effect Analysis 111
• 5.8 Heterogeneity Analysis 114
• CHAPTER 6. Conclusions, Recommendations, and Prospects 118
• 6.1 Conclusions 118
• 6.2 Recommendations 119
• 6.3 Research Limitations and Prospects 121
• References 124
• 국문초록 156