Research On The Spatial Impact Of Fintech On Regional Economic Growth

With the progress of a new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation,cutting-edge technologies such as big data,artificial intelligence,and cloud computing have developed rapidly,and the deep integration of finance and emerging technologies has given birth to fintech.In April 2022,The People’s Bank of China issued the "Fintech Development Plan(2022-2025)",pointing out the direction for the development of China’s fintech during the14 th Five-Year Plan period.At present,the development and application of fintech has become a new driving force to drive financial innovation and development and improve the efficiency of financial services,which is conducive to financial resources to better serve the development of the real economy,thereby promoting economic growth.Through empirical research and analysis of the spatial impact and path of fintech on regional economic growth,it has important theoretical and practical significance for the current development of China’s fintech,the reform and innovation of the financial industry and the development of regional economy.Based on the above description,this paper first takes the Yangtze River economic belt as an example,selects the panel data of 110 cities in the Yangtze River economic belt from 2011 to 2019 as a sample,uses the Peking University Digital inclusive finance index to represent the development level of fintech,constructs a spatial Dobbin model,and calculates the spatial impact of fintech on regional economic development from three perspectives: full sample,different regions and different periods.Then select the efficiency of financial resource allocation as the intermediary variable to test the intermediary effect of fintech in promoting regional economic growth by improving the efficiency of financial resource allocation,and take the development level of fintech as the threshold variable to explore the threshold effect of fintech on regional economic development by using the panel threshold model.The robustness test is carried out by means of instrumental variable method to alleviate the endogenous problem,replacing spatial weight matrix and core explanatory variables,which further proves the reliability of the results.The results show that:(1)Fintech can affect economic development through two ways:resource allocation effect and technological innovation effect.On the one hand,fintech can promote economic growth by reducing transaction costs,reducing information asymmetry and improving the ability of financial innovation;On the other hand,information leakage,false financing,increased financial risks and other problems brought about by the development of fintech may also have a negative impact on economic development.(2)The regression coefficient of the direct effect of fintech on the regional economic level is 0.5775,which is significantly positive,and the regression coefficient of the indirect effect is-0.2135.Through the significance test at the 10% level,it shows that fintech can significantly promote the economic growth of the region,but inhibit the economic development of adjacent areas.The spatial spillover effect of fintech on regional economic development in the Yangtze River economic belt shows obvious heterogeneity in different regions and different periods.(3)The impact of fintech on regional economic growth has some intermediary effects.Fintech can promote regional economic development by improving the efficiency of financial resource allocation.The intermediary effect accounts for about 14.84% of the total effect.(4)The role of fintech in promoting regional economic growth has a double threshold effect,with thresholds of 4.9487 and 5.2964 respectively.With the improvement of the level of fintech,the role of fintech in promoting regional economic development will become more and more obvious.According to the research conclusions,China should adopt a series of financial related policies to promote the development of fintech,alleviate the imbalance and insufficiency of fintech resources,avoid the continuous loss of talents and resources in the region due to the siphon effect,strengthen the ability of technological innovation,improve the supervision and management mechanism of fintech,improve the allocation efficiency of financial resources and break through the bottleneck of fintech development,We will give better play to the role of fintech in driving economic growth.