Abstract
The impact of cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) on international trade is prominent in recent years. The authors extend the international trade model with heterogeneous firms to include CBEC export and deduce that CBEC lowers the capability threshold for export. Firms and regions with different capabilities are affected differently, but the total regional export is increasing. In the empirical analysis section, they use panel data from 31 provinces in China from 2015 to 2018 and construct proxy variables for CBEC with CBEC comprehensive pilot zones and CBEC exporters. They find that CBEC contributes to economic growth and economic convergence. The underlying mechanisms include the convergence of regional exports and total factor productivity, while the convergence of capital isn't supported by the results.
Highlights
With a leading growth rate, China’s economic volume ranks second globally, but its internal development gap between regions is prominent, the trend of which is an important indicator for assessing the coordinated development of regional economies.Economic convergence is subdivided into ó convergence, a convergence, and club convergence. Xavier and Sala-i-Martin (1996) proposed a convergence and σ convergence. a convergence occurs when the level value at the beginning of the period has a negative effect on the growth rate
We find that cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) has no significant difference in promoting economic growth in eastern and mid-western provinces, but it weakens the trend of economic convergence of eastern provinces
Columns (1) and (2) are the results using the number of CBEC pilot zones to measure CBEC, (3) and (4) are the results using the dummy of CBEC exporters
Summary
With a leading growth rate, China’s economic volume ranks second globally, but its internal development gap between regions is prominent, the trend of which is an important indicator for assessing the coordinated development of regional economies. Different from the existing papers, this article focuses on the impact of CBEC on the regional economic convergence. This paper combines the statistical data of China Statistical Yearbook, the statistical yearbooks of provinces, and the statistics of Alibaba International Station to construct panel data of 31 provinces in China from 2015 to 2018 to test how CBEC influenced regional economic convergence and export growth. To explore the mechanisms of CBEC on economic growth, we first examine the impact of CBEC on exports and find that CBEC promotes the narrowing of differences in inter-provincial international trade. We use the provincial panel data of export merchants at Alibaba International Station to test the effect of CBEC on economic growth for the first time
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