Financial Shared Services Empower the Real Economy: The Evidence from China

As a product of digital technology, financial shared services can be deeply integrated into enterprise operation and management, which is significant to accelerate the financial transformation of real enterprises and achieve high-quality development. Based on this, this paper examines whether and how financial shared services empower the real economy, using data from listed companies in China from 2008 to 2017 as a sample. The research results show that financial shared services can significantly improve enterprise value and thus empower the real economy, and the optimization of operational efficiency is an important path for financial shared services to empower the real economy. Further research finds that the empowering effect of financial shared services on the real economy mainly exists in enterprises with many subsidiaries, large scale, and high labor intensity. This paper not only bridges the gap between financial shared services and micro-enterprise related research but also provides references and lessons for how to implement financial shared services in the real economy.