Analysis of Spillover Effects of Digital Economy—An Empirical Study Based on Time Series Input-Output

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze the composition and relationship of the factors that affect the output of digital economy. Theoretically, this study redefined the digital economy, whose essence is the component and economic forms of economic reproduction of digital elements. Empirically, we take Zhejiang Province, who has developed as the digital economy highland of China, as the research object. To assess the output effects of the digital economy, this study constructed an evaluation system comprising five indicators and 22 sub-indicators. Based on statistical data from 1998 to 2018, principal component analysis, unit root test and co-integration analysis were conducted in this paper, and then a vector autoregressive model was constructed. The results showed that, when other conditions remain unchanged, each unit of human capital and technology development will increase by 0.814 units and 1.112 units of digital economic output in Zhejiang Province, respectively. However, the variables of ICT application and infrastructure are in a state of stagnation due to the complete construction. The continuous investment cannot bring about significant growth but may occupy too many resources such as limited capital policies or drag down the digital output. Therefore, while increasing the investment in human capital variables and technology development variables, we need to reduce the investment in ICT application variables and infrastructure variables to maximize the digital economy's output efficiency.