Abstract: By incorporating the digital economy, market integration and corporate innovation performance into a unified analytical framework, this paper makes use of the panel data of the A-share high-tech industry listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2013 to 2018 to empirically test the influencing mechanism and the path of the digital economy and market integration on corporate innovation performance. The research results show that both the digital economy and the market integration are conducive to promoting the improvement of corporate innovation performance, and the digital economy has a positive regulatory effect on the innovation incentive effect of market integration. This conclusion is still valid after a series of robustness tests. The findings of further mechanism analysis show that market integration affects corporate innovation performance mainly through promoting the flow of innovative elements, and it has no significant impact on technological diversification, while the digital economy affects corporate innovation performance mainly through the channel of technological diversification. In addition, the differences in corporate characteristics have not changed the innovative effects of the digital economy and the market integration. However, the marginal effect of digital economy and market integration is stronger on the non-state-owned enterprises and the mature enterprises.

Key words: digital economy, market integration, corporate innovation performance, influence mechanism