经济政策不确定性、数字化转型与商业银行经营绩效

Economic Policy Uncertainty, Digital Transformation, and the Operational Performance of Commercial Banks

摘要: 本文阐明了经济政策不确定性(EPU)通过利差渠道管理费用渠道影响企业经营绩效的理论机制，并运用经济政策不确定性指数和银行财务数据进行了实证检验。研究发现，经济政策不确定性抑制了银行经营绩效提升，使用工具变量和更换主要被解释变量进行稳健性检验后依然支持上述结论；异质性分析发现，经济政策不确定性显著抑制了国有银行和农村商业银行的经营绩效，对股份银行等银行的影响不显著；进一步研究发现，商业银行数字化转型放大了经济政策不确定性对银行经营绩效的负面作用，并且通过进一步细分数字化转型类型发现，商业银行管理数字化、战略数字化、业务数字化均于经济政策不确定的负面冲击强化效果显著。本文在解释经济政策不确定性对商业银行绩效的负面作用的同时，也揭示了商业银行数字化转型的调节作用，为商业银行应对经济政策不确定性的冲击、厘清数字化转型战略存在的问题提供了经验证据。

Abstract: This paper clarifies the theoretical mechanism of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) affecting the business performance of enterprises through the interest spread channel management expense channel, and empirically tests it by using the economic policy uncertainty index and bank financial data. It is found that economic policy uncertainty inhibits the improvement of firm business performance, and the use of instrumental variables and replacement of major explanatory variables for robustness testing still supports the above conclusions. The heterogeneity analysis shows that economic policy uncertainty significantly inhibits the operating performance of state-owned banks and rural commercial banks, and has no significant impact on joint-stock banks and other banks. It is further found that the digital transformation of commercial banks amplifies the negative effects of economic policy uncertainty on bank business performance, and further subdivides the types of digital transformation, and finds that the digitalization of commercial banks’ management, strategy and business have significant effects on the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty. This paper not only explains the negative effect of economic policy uncertainty on the performance of commercial banks, but also reveals the moderating role of digital transformation of commercial banks, and provides empirical evidence for commercial banks to cope with the impact of economic policy uncertainty and clarify the problems existing in digital transformation strategies.