Abstract: From the perspective of rural credit institutions lending to support agriculture, this paper explores how digital finance intensifies market competition, which in turn produces a “catfish effect” in the rural financial market. Based on the Market Power Hypothesis, this paper theoretically analyzes the influence of digital finance development on rural financial institutions' agricultural and rural loans. In the empirical part, this paper combines the Digital Inclusive Financial Index of Peking University with the countylevel loan data of rural credit cooperatives and rural commercial banks. The conclusions are as follows. Firstly, the development of digital finance can encourage local rural credit institutions to improve the scale and growth rate of agricultural loans and farmers' loans, indicating that digital finance has led to a “catfish effect” in the rural financial market. Secondly, the positive impact of the development of digital finance on rural credit institutions' support for agriculture is mainly based on the competitive incentive mechanism. At this stage, it is difficult for digital finance to serve as a technical demonstration for rural credit institutions. Thirdly, the development of digital finance can also help to reduce loan interest rates of rural credit institutions. Therefore, more agriculturerelated entities can enjoy cheaper credit service, which promotes the realization of rural inclusive finance.

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摘要： 本文从农信机构贷款支农的角度出发，探究数字金融能够在多大程度上促进市场竞争，进而在农村金融市场发挥“鲶鱼效应”。理论部分基于市场势力假说，分析了数字金融发展对农信机构放贷行为的影响；实证部分将北京大学数字普惠金融的县级指数与县域农村信用社、农村商业银行的贷款数据相结合，对理论假说进行了检验。结论如下：第一，数字金融发展能够激励当地农信机构提升涉农贷款和农户贷款的投放规模和增长速度，表明数字金融在农村金融市场上发挥了“鲶鱼效应”。第二，数字金融发展对农信机构支农力度的正向影响主要来源于竞争激励机制，而现阶段数字金融难以在技术上对农信机构起到示范作用。第三，进一步讨论发现，数字金融发展还有助于降低农信机构的贷款利率，让更多的涉农主体享受到利率更低的信贷服务，真正推动农村正规金融服务的“普”和“惠”共同实现。

关键词: 数字金融, 农信机构, 鲶鱼效应, 涉农贷款