Research On How Digital Finance Can Ease Financing Constraints For Small And Medium-sized Enterprise

Smes have made great economic contributions in tax revenue,GDP,technological innovation,urban labor employment and many other aspects.However,in different historical periods and policy backgrounds,smes have always faced the problem of financing constraints,which is a negative factor affecting the development of enterprises and is not conducive to the sustainable and healthy development of enterprises.Under the digital finance model,traditional financial institutions,fintech companies and digital banks are the main providers of financial services.On the one hand,innovative financial products and services are developed based on the Internet and mobile terminals to increase the types of products and services for small and medium-sized enterprises.On the other hand,with the advantages of digital technology in reducing information asymmetry between banks and enterprises,reducing transaction costs between supply and demand,and enhancing transaction risk prevention and control,the service scope of traditional financial institutions is extended and service efficiency is improved.The outstanding performance of digital finance provides a new perspective and solution for solving the financing constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises.Therefore,It is of great significance to explore the easing effect of digital finance on the financing constraints of smes to further tap the potential of digital finance and solve the long-term financing constraints of smes.Based on this,this paper adopts the empirical analysis method to study the influence of digital finance on the financing constraints of small and medium-sized enterprises in China,selects the small and medium-sized enterprises financing through the New Third Board during 2011-2021,and matches the financial data of enterprises with the digital inclusive finance index(2011-2021)to obtain unbalanced panel data.Six indicators closely related to corporate financing constraints were selected to construct corporate financing constraints scoring indicators,and the fixed-effect model was used to carry out an empirical study.In order to enhance the robustness of the conclusion,the financing constraints index and digital financial index were replaced respectively.The financing constraints replacement index was FCP index.The reason is that the index considers both internal and external financing constraints and there is evidence to prove that it performs well in accurately identifying enterprises with financing constraints.Starting from the technical aspect,the digital financial replacement index reflects the development level of digital finance in a region by observing the development situation of the technology applied in the financial field.That is,key words are selected to match with prefecture-level cities or municipalities directly under the Central government of China,Baidu News advanced search is used,and web crawler technology is used to crawl the webpage source code of the search page to extract the number of search results.The natural logarithm of the search results is taken as the digital financial development level of the city in this year.Finally,based on the marketization level and industry two perspectives to carry out further research.The following conclusions are drawn:(1)smes represented by the New Three Board enterprises generally have financing constraints;(2)Digital finance significantly reduces the level of financing constraints on smes;(3)In regions with low marketization level,digital finance has greater easing effect on financing constraints of smes;(4)Digital finance has greater easing effect on financing constraints of high-tech enterprises.Finally,according to the research conclusions,the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward.