Intelligent manufacturing policy, ESG performance, and total factor productivity: Evidence from China

Under the global wave of intelligence, intelligent manufacturing has become a crucial means of transforming and upgrading China's manufacturing industry. Accurate evaluation of the implementation effects of intelligent manufacturing industry policies is an urgent issue. This study uses the introduction of the "Made in China 2025" policy as a quasi-natural experiment and employs the difference-in-differences method to investigate the impact of intelligent manufacturing policies on firms' total factor productivity (TFP) and its mechanisms. These results indicate that implementing intelligent manufacturing policies significantly enhances firms' TFP. Mechanism analysis reveals that intelligent manufacturing policies can improve firms' ESG performance by enhancing green technology innovation capabilities, increasing capital market attention, and reducing internal control costs, thereby enhancing firms' TFP. Heterogeneity analysis finds that intelligent manufacturing policies have a more pronounced effect on promoting TFP in large-scale enterprises, labor-intensive enterprises, firms with higher technical employee levels, companies in highly competitive industries, and enterprises in regions with higher levels of digital infrastructure development and lower economic development as compared to their counterparts. This study provides evidence of how intelligent manufacturing policies drive the high-quality and sustainable development of enterprises and offers insights for future policy formulation and implementation.