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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Health Economics
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1545215
This article is part of the Research Topic Sustainable and Mission-oriented Innovation in Economic Systems and Governance for Equitable Global Health and Wellbeing View all 29 articles
Digital Inclusion Finance, Government Subsidies and R&D Investment -Empirical Evidence Based on Listed Chinese Pharmaceutical Firms
Provisionally accepted- 1 School of Business Administration, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang, China
- 2 Drug Regulatory Research Base of NMPA, Research Institute of Drug Regulatory Science, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang, China
Digital inclusive finance, with 'universality' as its core feature, can stimulate enterprises to increase capital investment in research and development (R&D) through diversified channels. Using the digital financial inclusion index of 337 prefecture-level cities in China and the empirical data of Shanghai and Shenzhen A-share-listed pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises from 2011 to 2022, the article empirically examines the impact mechanism of digital financial inclusion on R&D investment of pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises from the perspective of government subsidy by using a high-dimensional fixed-effects model, a two-stage systematic GMM, and a moderated-effects test method. It is found that digital financial inclusion has a positive incentive effect on pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises to increase R&D investment, and this positive effect still holds after the endogeneity test and robustness test. The results of the moderating effect test indicate that government subsidies play a positive moderating role in the process of digital financial inclusion affecting enterprises' R&D investment. Further analyses show that digital financial inclusion has a more significant role in promoting the intensity of R&D investment in pharmaceutical enterprises in private enterprises, small and medium-sized enterprises, and regions with lower levels of traditional financial development.
Keywords: Digital inclusive finance, R&D investment, Traditional financial development level, pharmaceutical industry, Moderating effect
Received: 14 Dec 2024; Accepted: 21 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zhao, Su and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Wang Su, School of Business Administration, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang, China
Yuwen Chen, School of Business Administration, Shenyang Pharmaceutical University, Shenyang, China
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