In recent years, in the face of constantly rising external uncertainties, the downward pressure on the Chinese economy has continued to increase. Monetary policy, as an important policy tool for maintaining steady growth, has become a key issue to be addressed by policymakers in terms of how to improve the efficiency of monetary policy transmission, guide commercial banks more effectively to increase their services and support for the real economy, and promote the expansion of real enterprises to achieve the goal of maintaining steady growth.

Taking the establishment of National Big Data Comprehensive Pilot Zones as a quasi-natural experiment, this paper adopts the data of China’s commercial banks and A-share listed companies from 2012 to 2019, and utilizes the DID method to investigate how the big data industrial policy affects the credit transmission channel of the monetary policy in the dual dimensions of banks and enterprises. The study finds that the pilot zones launched in 2016 significantly improve the capability of banks to serve the real economy, and enhance the quality of corporate information disclosure and credit demand expansion by promoting enterprise digital transformation, thereby simultaneously improving the efficiency of monetary policy transmission at both the bank and enterprise levels. Furthermore, the big data industrial policy produces a significant enhancement in the effectiveness of a loose monetary policy in promoting business expansion as well as macroeconomic growth.

This paper has the following contributions: First, it identifies the causal relationship between the big data industrial policy and monetary policy transmission efficiency, forming a useful supplement to the existing research on the economic effect of the big data industrial policy. Second, it examines the impact of the big data industrial policy on monetary policy transmission at the bank level, and verifies the monetary policy transmission effect of the big data industrial policy in a more refined way from the perspective of corporate credit acquisition, enriching the research related to the influencing factors of monetary policy transmission efficiency and its economic consequences. Third, the policy implication of this paper lies in the finding that the implementation of a big data industrial policy external to the micro subject can help promote monetary policy transmission and strengthen the steady growth effect of the monetary policy.