| China's Small and Medium-sized Enterprises account for a high proportion and large scale in the main body of the market economy,and their financing and development are related to the high-quality development of China's economy and the economic restructuring in the transition period,but the financing difficulties of SMEs exist objectively in China.Under the new normal,China is facing the increasing pressure of economic downturn.As the capillaries of economic operation,the financing constraints of SMEs need to be solved urgently.The central government also pointed out in the meeting of deploying 2020 economic work that it is necessary to increase the financial support for SMEs and effectively solve the problem of financing difficulty and high financing cost.It is of great theoretical and practical significance to explore and analyze the ways and paths to ease the financing constraints of SMEs in China.Digital technology represented by big data,blockchain,cloud computing and artificial intelligence has been gradually applied to the traditional financial industry.When digital technology and traditional financial format are highly integrated,a new generation of financial innovation mode,namely digital finance,has emerged.The deep application of digital technology can help to realize the interconnection of everything and information exchange,solve the problem of difficult information flow between market entities,and realize the maximization and optimization of information value.Digital finance has laid an important foundation for supporting the financing of SMEs,and has brought the possibility to ease the information asymmetry,innovate the financing mode,and even change the traditional financial system.In China,the development of digital finance has rich practical experience in financing support for SMEs.However,compared with actively advocating digital finance to support the financing of SMEs in practice,the academic research in this field is not enough and full and in-depth,and it is difficult to effectively guide the practice.Therefore,this thesis will focus on the impact of digital finance on the financing constraints of SMEs to carry out in-depth research,according to the structure of " Literature review and theoretical basis-Current situation and problems analysis-Theoretical model construction-Empirical Analysis and effect evaluation-Conclusions and suggestions",trying to answer the following questions:(1)Is digital finance conducive to easing the financing constraints faced by SMEs in China? What is the difference of mitigation effect for different types of enterprises?(2)If it can alleviate the disease,what is the underlying mechanism and conduction pathway?(3)What kind of impact can alleviate the financing constraints have on the self-development and performance of SMEs?In view of the above problems,this thesis is based on the thinking and application of financial and economic theories such as information asymmetry theory,transaction cost theory,credit rationing theory,network effect theory,digital economy theory and long tail effect theory.On the basis of domestic and foreign classic literature and frontier research,combined with theoretical analysis and practical analysis,qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis Case analysis and other research methods from multiple dimensions.Firstly,this thesis discusses the current situation of financing supply and demand of SMEs in China,and analyzes the problems and reasons of financing constraints.This thesis clarifies the main forms and functions of digital finance,and analyzes the development process and current situation of digital finance from the time and space dimensions.From the perspective of different market players,this thesis analyzes the support mode of digital finance to the financing of SMEs,and reveals the mystery of digital finance to support the financing mode of SMEs from the specific operation level in the form of micro case collection.Then it constructs the theoretical model of the research,demonstrates the economic logic of digital finance alleviating the financing constraints of SMEs from the theoretical level,and analyzes the three transmission paths of alleviating the financing constraints,as well as the mechanism of influencing enterprise performance through the financing constraints.On this basis,according to the theoretical assumptions,we use a number of sets of data and a variety of econometric models for empirical test.Empirical research follows the logic system of "2 + 3",2 refers to two sets of data(SME board listed companies data and China's small and micro enterprises survey data),3 refers to three parts of research content(the effect of digital finance on SME financing constraints,transmission path,economic consequences).The least squares(OLS),panel fixed effect model,System GMM model,Tobit model,logit model and ologit model were used to check the effect;Instrumental variable method(2SLS),double difference method(DID)and propensity score matching method(PSM)were used for endogenous analysis;The method of index replacement or estimation model replacement is used to test the robustness of the conclusion;Finally,the thesis draws a conclusion and puts forward countermeasures and suggestions from the perspectives of government,financial institutions,financial technology companies and SMEs.The main conclusions are as follows:First,whether in listed or unlisted enterprises,digital finance can significantly alleviate the financing constraints of SMEs,and this effect has marginal increasing effect and dynamic effect.The marginal effect shows that the mitigation intensity increases with the development level of digital finance,which is in line with the network effect characteristics of digital finance,that is the scale economy of the demand side.The dynamic effect shows that the easing effect not only exists in the current period,but also weakens gradually in the three lag periods.The effect has obvious superposition effect.The easing effect of digital finance on the financing constraints of SMEs has a long-term nature.Second,the easing effect of digital finance on the financing constraints of SMEs is heterogeneous.From the perspective of regional characteristics,the role of digital finance in developed areas is mainly to supplement and upgrade the traditional finance,improve the traditional financial service mode,and play the role of "icing on the cake" for the financing of SMEs;In less developed areas,it mainly makes up for the lack of financing channels for SMEs,creates financing opportunities for SMEs that do not meet the traditional financing conditions,and plays a great role of "sending charcoal in the snow".From the perspective of the nature of enterprises,high-tech enterprises are more relaxed in financing constraints.From the perspective of the age of business owners,the financing constraints of young and middle-aged business owners are more relaxed,which indicates that digital finance may have a certain exclusion phenomenon for the elderly.We should pay attention to prevent the emergence of "digital divide" for the elderly.From the perspective of business owners' education background,business owners with high education background do not enjoy more relief of financing constraints than those with general education background.Even the group with low education background has the strongest relief effect.Digital finance shows its simple,convenient and operable nature of inclusive.From the perspective of financial supervision,digital financial supervision can promote the healthy development of digital finance and improve its ability to alleviate financing constraints.Third,digital finance can alleviate the financing constraints of SMEs through information identification transmission path,financing cost transmission path and financial marketization transmission path.Digital finance can strengthen the information search,identification and processing of SMEs,so as to reduce the information asymmetry between capital suppliers and SMEs and ease the financing constraints.At the same time,it can reduce the financing cost and ease the financing constraints by reducing the debt financing cost of SMEs,accelerating the flow of funds,reducing high-cost liabilities and reducing financial leverage.It can also accelerate the reform of financial marketization,improve the level of financial marketization,improve the financing situation of enterprises,and ease the financing constraints.Compared with state-owned enterprises,digital finance has stronger ability to ease the financing constraints of private SMEs.Fourth,digital finance can improve the financial performance and innovation performance of SMEs by easing the financing constraints.On the one hand,the release of financing constraints can enable enterprises to obtain more sufficient capital to invest in operation and investment activities,so as to improve the growth and profitability of enterprises and enhance financial performance.On the other hand,it can increase R&D investment,improve innovation output and improve innovation performance.In addition,digital finance can also help to optimize the quality of innovation and improve the problem of SMEs' innovation.Digital finance can solve the financing difficulties of SMEs,improve the performance of enterprises,and promote the good development of China's real economy.The possible innovations of this thesis are as follows:First,it further analyzes the path mechanism of digital finance affecting the financing constraints of SMEs,and puts forward three transmission paths:information identification,financing cost and financial marketization.When exploring the transmission path of financing cost,from the perspective of debt financing cost and enterprise leverage,in addition to analyzing the reduction of financing cost caused by the decrease of debt financing cost,this thesis also puts forward the perspective of digital finance accelerating enterprise capital flow and improving supply chain finance so as to reduce enterprise debt and reduce enterprise leverage,This thesis supplements and expands the path mechanism of the impact of digital finance on the financing of SMEs.Second,it introduces the discussion on the economic consequences of digital finance to ease the financing constraints,and establishes a relatively complete research framework of "transmission path-Easing constraints-economic consequences" of digital finance to the financing of SMEs.Since the ultimate purpose of digital finance to support enterprise financing is to improve enterprise performance and promote enterprise development,the improvement effect of digital finance on enterprise performance brought by easing financing constraints is incorporated into the unified research paradigm,which increases the research perspective of enterprise economic consequences and expands the research boundary of digital finance on SME financing.A more complete and standardized research system has been formed.Third,the combination of two types of SMEs data from different sources makes up for the defect that the conclusion is not robust due to the single sample.Because some listed companies do not fully meet the standards for the recognition of SMEs in China,besides using the data of SMEs,we also use the data of China Micro and Small Enterprises Survey(CMES).When the conclusions are consistent,the robustness of using single data is enhanced.When the conclusion is different,it shows that the impact of digital finance on listed and unlisted SMEs is different,which can strengthen the in-depth understanding of the function of digital finance.Fourth,according to the characteristics of research problems,variables and data,the research perspective and research methods are innovated.For example,based on the characteristics that small and medium-sized business owners often have strong control over enterprises,this thesis studies the influence of business owners' personal characteristics on the effect of digital finance to alleviate financing constraints.Based on CMES data,propensity score matching(PSM)is used to analyze the endogeneity of the model.Using the ratio of operating income and total assets in CMES data,this thesis constructs a variable to measure the financial performance of enterprises,and verifies the promotion effect of digital finance on the financial performance of enterprises.According to the characteristics of enterprise transparency data,ordered logit model is used. |
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