Can digital infrastructure improve corporate productivity? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China✰

IF 7.9 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Economic Analysis and Policy Pub Date : 2025-02-20 DOI:10.1016/j.eap.2025.02.030

Shunjie Meng , Xiaoxin Xu

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Digital infrastructure, as the basis for the development of the digital economy, has a significant impact on corporate activities. Based on China's enterprises data from 2007 to 2020, we construct a three-sector theoretical model and study the impact of digital infrastructure on firms' total factor productivity (TFP) using the Big Data Pilot Zone (BDP) policy as an exogenous shock. We adopt the difference-in-differences (DID) model and find that the BDP policy increases corporate TFP. The mechanism shows that the BDP policy improves corporate information technology capabilities. Meanwhile, the BDP policy helps firms better match talent and stimulates firms to engage in innovative activities. Furthermore, non-state-owned firms, high management quality firms, competitive industries, and highly digitized industries benefit more from the BDP policy. Our research highlights the significance of digital infrastructure for social change and offers empirical evidence and policy recommendations for advancing the close integration of the real and digital economies.

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来源期刊

Economic Analysis and Policy ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

9.80

自引率

9.20%

发文量

231

审稿时长

93 days

期刊介绍： Economic Analysis and Policy (established 1970) publishes articles from all branches of economics with a particular focus on research, theoretical and applied, which has strong policy relevance. The journal also publishes survey articles and empirical replications on key policy issues. Authors are expected to highlight the main insights in a non-technical introduction and in the conclusion.