政府数字化转型与企业脱虚返实——基于企业投资结构偏向的分析

Abstract

This paper incorporates government digital transformation into the analytical framework of firms' investment structure bias. It constructs a theoretical model of how digital government affects micro-firms' real and financial investment decisions, and conducts empirical tests based on Chinese listed firm data and local government website annual work report data. The findings are as follows: (1) Digital government construction promotes an increase in firms' overall investment scale, notably significantly promoting real investment expansion and restraining financial asset allocation, effectively facilitating firms' reallocation from financialization to the real economy. (2) Mechanism analysis shows that digital government construction significantly reduces firms' institutional transaction costs, alleviates financing constraints, reduces perceived economic policy uncertainty, and enhances returns on real investment. (3) For non-state-owned firms, smaller firms, strategic emerging firms, and firms with higher digitalization levels, as well as those located in regions with higher marketization, higher financial development, and better digital infrastructure, the reallocation effect of digital government construction is more pronounced. (4) Digital government construction also helps alleviate underinvestment, improve investment efficiency, and restrain firms' short-term flow-oriented thinking. This study expands the theoretical framework of the interaction between digital technology-driven government function transformation and firms' investment behavior, supplements relevant empirical evidence, and provides some reference for high-quality firm development in the digital economy era.