| Abstract: |
| In this paper, we devote to exploring the effects of digital finance on the corporate financialization. We first built a two-stage portfolio model to analyze how the digital finance development impacts the financial investment of corporations with different financialization motives, which is followed by empirical examinations corresponding to the theoretical analysis, where the corporate digital finance index was constructed by text analysis in a keyword network describing the logical relationship among 138 keywords standing for corporate digital transformation and corporate finance. Two core results are achieved. First, digital finance development pushes the corporate financialization. Serial robustness tests and endogeneity test were also carried out to support this result. Second, digital finance development has heterogeneous effects on corporate financialization. It drives speculative financialization positively but has no significant impact on risk-hedging financialization, while speculative financial investments increase corporate uncertainty and affect core business development. Finally, some additional heterogeneity analysis with respect to managers` financial capability, ownership nature and industry characteristics are carried out to complete our paper. Some targeted policy recommendations are proposed in the conclusion. |
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