Does the Digital Economy Promote Upgrading the Industrial Structure of Chinese Cities?

Songqin Zhao, Diyun Peng, Huwei Wen () and Huilin Song
Additional contact information
Songqin Zhao: School of Economics and Management, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China
Diyun Peng: School of Economics and Management, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China
Huwei Wen: School of Economics and Management, Nanchang University, Nanchang 330031, China
Huilin Song: School of International Economics and Trade, Jiangxi University of Finance and Economics, Nanchang 330013, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 16, 1-19

Abstract: As the driving force for the upgrading of the global industrial structure, digital technology has been at the helm of transforming the current economic and technological paradigm. This study empirically analyzes the role of the digital economy in the upgrading industrial structure using panel data from 237 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011–2019. Empirical results show that the development of the digital economy has a significant positive and direct effect on the upgrading of industrial structure, as measured by the two indicators of advancement and servitization. In addition, the digital economy significantly promotes upgrading of the technological progress and human capital of Chinese cities, thus promoting upgrading of the industrial structure. Moreover, the spatial autoregressive model (SAR) and the Spatial Durbin model (SDM) both show that the digital economy has a positive spatial spillover effect on upgrading of the industrial structure.

Keywords: digital economy development; industrial structure; mediation effect model; spatial Durbin model (SDM) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (19)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/16/10235/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/16/10235/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:16:p:10235-:d:890783

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().