Destination country’s institutional quality and Chinese E-commerce exports

Abstract

This paper constructs a unique dataset of Chinese firm-level bilateral cross-border e-commerce exports using the back-end online logistics database of a famous Chinese logistics platform to study the impact of destination country’s institutional quality on Chinese cross-border e-commerce export. Our results show that the institutional quality of destination countries significantly boosts China’s cross-border e-commerce exports. Institutional quality has a more significant effect on the extensive margin than the intensive margin. Mechanism analysis shows that institutional quality significantly stimulates export entry, export survival, and continuous exports. Furthermore, destination country’s institutional quality has a greater impact on cross-border e-commerce export than on traditional export.