Hao Wang, Tao Zhang, Xi Wang
Although many enterprises adopt short-term debt and long-term use to break through the constraints of financing constraints, in fact, short-term debt and long-term use brings great instability to the sustainable operation and high-quality deve-lopment of enterprises.Existing literature, when exploring the impact of digital economy policies on short-term debt and long-term use, is limited to formulating hypotheses from a single theoretical perspective and then analyzing the direct relationship between the two.Based on fault-tolerant control theory, signaling theory, and information asymmetry theory, this study uncovers and elaborates the mediating mechanism of the digital economy policy affecting the long use of short-term debt of enterprises from the perspective of urban economic resilience.Moreover, this study reveals the boundary mechanism of urban economic resilience on corporate short-term debt longevity from three aspects: new quality productivity at the city level, socially responsible investment and executive traits at the firm level.Using the double-difference empirical research method, this study finds that the implementation of digi-tal economy policies, i.e., the pilot policy of the national-level big data comprehensive experimental zone, reduces firms' short-debt long-term use based on the consolidated data of China's prefecture-level city-level and A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2021.It is further found that city economic resilience plays a significant mediating role in the relationship between digital economy policies and firms' short-term debt longevity.Specifically, with the implementation of the digital economy policy, the city's economic resilience is increasing, and firms' short-term debt and long-term use of debt are significantly reduced.In addition, this study finds that the reduction of urban economic resilience on short-term debt overhang is more significant in cities with higher levels of new quality productivity.Meanwhile, this study finds that at the firm level, the reduction of short debt for long term use is more significant for firms that invest more in responsive social responsibility than in strategic social responsibility.Finally, urban econo-mic resilience has a more significant effect on the reduction of short-term debt and long-term use if the CEO of the firm has ever had the experience of suffering a disaster.This study analyzes the intrinsic theoretical mechanisms of digital economy policies and firms' short-term debt longevity from the theoretical level, and further reveals the situational mechanisms of urban economic resilience affecting firms' short-term debt longevity in the context of digital economy policies from multiple perspectives at the city level and firm level, respectively.In addition, this study provides practical references on how to optimize corporate strategies to achieve high-quality development in the face of financing constraints.