关键词: 数字技术应用, 全要素生产率, 新“索洛悖论”, 人力资本结构

Abstract:     In the era of the new round of technological revolution, digital technology application has become an important engine to drive the quality and efficiency of the real economy. Based on the data of A-share listed companies in China from 2009 to 2019, this paper used the fixed effects model and instrumental variables approach to examine the effect and mechanism of digital technology application on enterprise productivity. In the research design, we used the Python crawler technology to extract the relevant word frequencies of enterprises′ digital technology application from annual reports, used text analysis to sum up all the relevant word frequencies of digital technology application, and adopted the proportion of word frequencies of digital technology application to the total number of word frequencies in the annual reports to measure the level of enterprises′ digital technology application.The study found that digital technology application has significantly improved enterprises′ total factor productivity and effectively cracked the new "Solow paradox" in the digital era. This conclusion remains sound after robustness tests such as endogeneity treatment, substitution of key variable measures, and exclusion of explanations for strategic behavior. The mechanism test found that the digital technology application promoted enterprises′ total factor productivity by improving the technological innovation quality and market matching efficiency, as well as reducing the operation and management costs. Heterogeneity analysis showed that digital technology application has a stronger productivity improvement effect on service than manufacturing enterprises, and it also has a more obvious promotion effect on industries with high market competition. Digital technology application increased the demand for highly skilled and educated workers, and human capital structure optimization will strengthen the productivity improving effect of digital technology application. This paper will help to deepen the understanding of the realistic path of enterprises to break through the new "Solow paradox", and it will provide some empirical evidence and practical basis for the integration and application of digital technology to improve the quality and efficiency, and to empower enterprises′ high-quality development. The main marginal contributions of this paper are as follows: (1) Based on the perspective of convergence application of digital technology, this study selected a large-volume and wide sample of A-share listed enterprises, and adopted textual analysis to accurately and comprehensively measure the actual digital technology application in the enterprise sector, and explored the impact effect of digital technology application on the enterprise′s total factor productivity. The research will not only compensate for the insufficiency of the macroscopic data, enrich and expand the related research on digital technology, but also provide micro-evidence that digital technology empowers the economic high-quality development. (2) This paper also provided some in-depth discussion of the internal mechanism of digital technology application affecting the enterprises′ total factor productivity, to a certain extent，which will open the "black box" of the productivity effect of digital technology application, utilize the multiplier effect of digital technology to enhance productivity, and crack the new "Solow paradox" in the digital era, thus providing a new path for digital technology development. (3) This paper found that highly skilled and educated human capital strengthens the productivity growth effect of digital technology application, indicating that the development of digital technology needs to be matched with the structure of senior human capital, which is an important policy revelation for the use of digital technology to realize the quality and efficiency of enterprises.

Key words: digital technology application, total factor productivity, new "Solow paradox", human capital structure