Research On The Impact Of Digital Finance On The Debt Risk Of Small And Medium-Sized Enterprises

SMEs are one of the indispensable subjects in the market,and their contribution to Chinese economic development can not be underestimated.However,due to its small business scale and imperfect company information,SMEs have generally faced the problems of poor external financing channels and high capital cost for a long time,resulting in greater debt risk.As an innovative way of applying science and technology to traditional finance,digital finance can better penetrate financial services into long tail customers such as SMEs,and provide low threshold,low price,high efficiency and high-quality financial services.Therefore,it can alleviate the financing constraints of SMEs,and then help SMEs reduce debt risk,which has become a feasible way to solve the difficulties of SMEs.By systematically combing the existing literature and analyzing the relevant theories,this SMEs are one of the indispensable subjects in the market,and their contribution to Chinese economic development can not be underestimated.However,due to its small business scale and imperfect company information,SMEs have generally faced the problems of poor external financing channels and high capital cost for a long time,resulting in greater debt risk.As an innovative way of applying science and technology to traditional finance,digital finance can better penetrate financial services into long tail customers such as SMEs,and provide low threshold,low price,high efficiency and high-quality financial services.Therefore,it can alleviate the financing constr aints of SMEs,and then help SMEs reduce debt risk,which has become a feasible way to solve the difficulties of SMEs.By systematically combing the existing literature and analyzing the relevant theories,this dissertation decides to take the financing constraints as an intermediary variable to analyze whether digital finance can reduce the debt risk of SMEs on the basis of reducing the financing constraints.This dissertation uses a total of 360 small and medium-sized listed enterprises on the gem and SME board from 2013 to 2020 as the main research object,takes the overall indicators of all regions in Chinese third digital finance index report released by Peking University as the core explanatory variable reflecting the development of digital finance,takes Z value as the explanatory variable representing enterprise debt risk,and uses the two-way fixed effect model of fixed individual and year,Verify the impact of digital finance on the debt risk of SMEs.Further verify the intermediary effect of financing constraints.Then,according to different groups,verify the effect of enterprise heterogeneity.Finally,the robustness of the results is tested.This dissertation draws the following conclusions: first,the development of digital finance can significantly reduce the debt risk of SMEs.Second,digital finance can help enterprises reduce debt risk by reducing the financing constraints of SMEs.Third,the role of digital finance in reducing the debt risk of SMEs is more significant for private enterprises,enterprises in the eastern region and manufacturing enterprises.According to the conclusions of this dissertation,the following suggestions are put forward: for the government: on the one hand,we should support the development of science and technolo gy enabled traditional finance and strengthen the construction of digital financial infrastructure;On the other hand,enhance the regulatory capacity and update the regulatory model.For enterprises,they should enhance their awareness of risk prevention,reduce financing costs and debt risks through digital finance.At the same time,establish a credit system to improve their own reputation.Banks and other financial institutions should also actively integrate into the tide of digital finance development to better serve SMEs.