技术赋能银行业：银行技术采纳及其影响

BANKING ON TECHNOLOGY:BANK TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION AND ITS EFFECTS Sheila JiangAlessandro RebucciGang Zhang Working Paper 33551http://www.nber.org/papers/w33551 NATIONAL BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH1050 Massachusetts AvenueCambridge, MA 02138March 2025 We are grateful to Manuel Amador, Anmol Bhandari, Xiaoji Lin, Gianni De Nicolo, GuangqianPan(discussant), Fabrizio Perri, Yuchao Peng, Andrea Presbitero, Nicola Pierri, Robert Marquez,Qi Sun,Shengxing Zhang, and Yu Zhang (discussant), for their comments, suggestions, anddiscussions. Weare thankful for comments received at the ABFER-JFDS, CBCF, CEIBS, theFederal Reserve Bankof Minneapolis, FISF, PHBS, SED, University of Sydney, and SDU. Wealso thank Huy Nguyen,Huajun Meng, and Jing Zhang for their excellent research assistance.Zhang gratefully acknowledgesfinancial support from the ASEAN Business Research Initiative.The views expressed herein are thoseof the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of theNational Bureau of Economic Research. NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not beenpeer-reviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompaniesofficialNBER publications. © 2025 by Sheila Jiang, Alessandro Rebucci, and Gang Zhang. All rights reserved. Shortsectionsof text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permissionprovided that fullcredit, including © notice, is given to the source. Banking on Technology: Bank Technology Adoption and Its EffectsSheila Jiang, Alessandro Rebucci, and Gang ZhangNBER Working Paper No. 33551March 2025JEL No. G21, O3, O4 ABSTRACT We develop and estimate a new model of endogenous growth in bank efficiency and firmproductivityinwhichbanksadopttechnologyembeddedincapitalgoodsproducedbyentrepreneurs,andagentschoosewhethertobecomeworkersorcapital-good-producingentrepreneurs. In this framework, bankefficiency influences firm productivity by affecting agents'occupational choices, while firm productivityaffects bank efficiency through the relative price ofcapital goods. We find that increasing technologyadoption in the banking system to the level inthe top half of the distribution in the data acceleratesthe economy's long-term growth from 2% to2.17%. We also find that empirical evidence based onU.S. bank, metropolitan, and state-leveldata is consistent with the critical mechanisms of our model. Sheila JiangDepartment of Finance and Real EstateWarrington College of BusinessUniversity of FloridaP.O. Box 117168Gainesville, FL 32611Sheila.Jiang@warrington.ufl.edu Gang ZhangCheung Kong GSB1 Changan Ave, Oriental Plaza, E2, Floor 2Dongcheng Dist, BeijingChinagzhang@ckgsb.edu.cn Alessandro RebucciJohns Hopkins Carey Business School100 International DriveBaltimore, MD 21202and NBERarebucci@jhu.edu 1Introduction As financial institutions increasingly adopt new technologies like Fintech and AI, under-standing their economic implications is critical for industry leaders and policymakers.While empirical microeconomic evidence on the causal impact of these technologies onbank, firm, and household-level outcomes—such as access to credit and competition—isabundant, their economy-wide benefits, particularly their contribution to the cost of fi-nance and aggregate growth, remain elusive due to the complexity of their general equi-librium effects.In this paper, we develop and estimate a novel model in which banksadopt technology embedded in capital goods produced by entrepreneurs. Our findingssuggest that increasing technology adoption in the banking system to the average levelin the top half of the distribution of IT expenditure can significantly lower lending ratesand raise per capita GDP growth from 2% to 2.17% in the counterfactual balanced growthpath of the economy. The paper also provides direct empirical evidence based on bank, metropolitan area(MSA), and state-level data on the critical mechanisms at work in the model. In particular,we show that higher bank information technology (IT) acquisition causes a lower cost ofbank intermediation and is associated with higher lending volumes to small businesses.Furthermore, we find that U.S. states or MSAs with more efficient banks have a moredispersed and less skewed firm-size distribution, aligned with our model’s prediction ofa shift in the firm-size distribution toward larger and more productive firms in responseto higher bank IT adoption. Our model features endogenous growth in both bank efficiency and firms’ techno-logical progress. As in Lucas (1978) and Buera and Shin (2013), a continuum of agentschooses between two occupations: worker or entrepreneur. This occupation choice com-pares the wage rate with the expected profits from entrepreneurship. The average abilityof entrepreneurs in the economy determines the growth rate of aggregate firm produc-tivity. Entrepreneurs employ workers to produce capital goods and must pay their wagebills in advance of sales. The entrepreneurs’ rev