Abstract:

The escalation of export values is a crucial guarantee for China in building a new system of high-level open economy and achieving high-quality development. The digital transformation of the financial sector has emerged as a new driving force for value addition in Chinese enterprises’ exports. By constructing a theoretical model incorporating digitally transformed banking sectors, this study deduces and analyzes the mechanism through which bank digitalization drives the growth of corporate export value, employing matched data from Chinese industrial enterprises and customs trade statistics for empirical testing. The research findings reveal that bank digital transformation effectively stimulates the growth in corporate export values, with underlying technology-driven aspects of digital transformation exhibiting an even stronger propelling effect. Mechanism tests uncover that bank digital transformation fosters a sustained rise in corporate export values by reducing firms’ credit costs and incentivizing technological advancements. Heterogeneity analysis uncovers that the driving effect of bank digital transformation on export values is more pronounced for firms with higher levels of digitalization and intelligence integration, those engaging in general trade, technology-intensive enterprises, and businesses located in regions with higher degrees of market segmentation. Further analysis reveals that bank digital transformation, by boosting export values, facilitates the optimization and upgrading of firms’ positions within the global value chain division of labor. The research findings provide a practical basis and policy implications for promoting the digital transformation of banks, facilitating the high-end upgrading of the export value of high-quality financial services, and achieving high-level opening-up.

Key words: bank digital transformation, export value, technological advancement, credit cost, global value chain