地方财政压力与企业数字化转型OACHSSCD

In recent years,digital transformation has become an important driver of high-quality economic de-velopment and corporate competitiveness.However,many Chinese firms still face constraints in financing,talent accumulation,and expectation formation during digital transformation.Meanwhile,local governments are under in-creasing fiscal pressure because of the mismatch between fiscal revenue capacity and expenditure responsibilities.Unlike prior studies that mainly examine corporate digital transformation from the perspectives of firm characteris-tics,digital infrastructure,market environment,or industrial policy,this paper focuses on local fiscal pressure and explores how macro-level fiscal constraints are transmitted to micro-level corporate decisions through government be-havior.Based on data from Chinese A-share listed firms and prefecture-level cities from 2007 to 2023,this paper empirically examines the relation between local fiscal pressure and corporate digital transformation.Corporate digital transformation is measured using textual information from firms'annual reports,while local fiscal pressure is meas-ured using city-level fiscal revenue and expenditure data.The baseline model controls for firm-level and city-level characteristics and includes industry and year fixed effects.The results show that local fiscal pressure significantly inhibits corporate digital transformation.This conclusion remains valid after addressing potential endogeneity through an instrumental variable approach and propensity score matching.It remains robust after tests including lag-ging the explanatory variable.These findings indicate that greater fiscal pressure weakens local governments'policy support capacity and firms'transformation expectations,thereby reducing firms'willingness and ability to promote digital transformation.Mechanism analysis reveals that local fiscal pressure intensifies three types of constraints on corporate digital transformation:"unable to transform","unskilled in transformation",and"afraid to transform".First,fiscal pressure reduces local fiscal expenditure on science and technology and increases corporate financing costs,thereby aggravating firms'financial constraints.Second,fiscal pressure weakens government talent support and reduces firms'investment in R&D personnel.Third,fiscal pressure reduces local governments'attention to dig-ital development and weakens macroeconomic confidence.Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the inhibitory effect is more pronounced among firms in the eastern region,manufacturing firms,those in areas with lower population ag-ing,regions with stronger tax enforcement,firms with less short-sighted managers,non-politically connected firms,and non-state-owned enterprises.This paper provides new evidence for understanding the interaction between tradi-tional fiscal systems and the emerging digital economy.The findings suggest that promoting corporate digital trans-formation requires improving local fiscal governance,maintaining stable support for science and technology expendi-ture,strengthening talent policies,and creating a predictable institutional environment.