| The innovation and development of small and medium-sized enterprises(SMEs)is of great significance to macroeconomic growth,industrial transformation and upgrading,and national employment.However,financing constraints such as few financing channels and asymmetric credit information restrict the investment scale of small and medium-sized enterprises in innovation activities.In recent years,with the development of Internet,big data,cloud computing and other high-tech,fintech,based on the concept of "traditional finance add scientific and technological means" and the technology of third-party payment,cloud credit,digital currency and other technologies,has gradually been valued by academia and industry.For small and medium-sized enterprises,the application of fintech in the area of financing,mainly reflected in Internet crowdfunding and Internet lending,provides a new way to alleviate their financing problems.Theoretically,the application of fintech not only opens up new financing channels for enterprises,but also has good characteristics such as easy access to funds,large cost elasticity and wide coverage,so it should be able to provide solutions for the financing of small and medium-sized enterprises.However,due to the problems of rapid application iteration and lagging supervision in the development of fintech in China,whether SMEs can really ease the financing constraints through the application of fintech,and put the raised funds into research and development activities remains to be questioned.At the same time,because the Internet is the cornerstone of the generation and application of fintech,the Internet environment may also have different impacts on the relationship between the application of fintech and the investment in R&D.Faced with the different flexibility of Internet environment and the integration of Internet environment,will the relationship between the application of fintech and R&D investment change?This become an important question.In order to fill the above gaps and answer the above questions,this paper analyzes the impact of the application of fintech on the R&D investment of small and medium-sized enterprises,and discusses the moderation roles of Internet flexibility and integration.On the basis of combing the existing literature,this paper first clarifies the logical relationship among the application of fintech and R&D investment of enterprises,and analyzes the heterogeneity of enterprises,and then puts forward research hypotheses according to theoretical deduction.Based on the theoretical analysis,this paper conducts an empirical study based on the data of China Small and Medium-sized Enterprises System(CSMES)in 2018 to 2019.The results show that:(1)the application of fintech,including crowdfunding and fintech lending,can improve the R&D investment of enterprises;(2)in the enterprises which Internet environment is better,the relationship between the application of fintech and the R&D input is more significant,this enhancement is embodied in both Internet flexibility and integration;(3)further research finds that the release of financing constraints plays an intermediary role between the application of fintech and R&D investment.At the same time,this paper uses the macro index of "Digital Inclusive Finance Research" of Peking University in 2018 and Internet application degree as the instrumental variables to carry out the 2SLS and LIML estimations and exploits Heckman model,which eliminates the possible endogenous problems,and replaces the relevant explanatory variables and regression model to improve the robustness of this conclusion.The above conclusions provide new ideas and plans for the financing and innovation development of small and medium-sized enterprises at the enterprise level,and provide theoretical support for enterprises to connect fintech and carry out Internet transformation.At the policy level,this paper provides the direction for the policy-making of fintech,and provides references for the healthy development of fintech. |
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