Digital Service Trade and Labor Income Share—Empirical Research on 48 Countries

Alai Yeerken and Feng Deng ()
Additional contact information
Alai Yeerken: School of Economics and Management, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China
Feng Deng: School of Economics and Management, Xinjiang University, Urumqi 830046, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 6, 1-19

Abstract: Fast-paced digitization is affecting all aspects of life, including the way we trade. This study empirically analyzes the influence and mechanism of digital service trade on labor income share using 48 countries’ panel data from 2005 to 2019. The research results show that digital service trade has a positive effect on labor income share. Specifically, the impact of digital service trade on labor income share includes productivity effect, structural effect, and distribution effect. The results also show that the export of digital service trade is more conducive to increasing domestic labor income share than the import. The positive impact of digital service trade on labor income share in OECD countries is more significant than in non-OECD countries. At the same time, the digital service trade’s income distribution effect has heterogeneity due to differentiated national digital service trade barriers’ level. This paper discusses theoretically and empirically the impact of digital service trade on the share of labor income for the first time, and puts forward policy suggestions on formulating more open and win-win digital service trade policies, improving labor income, and promoting social equity and inclusive global trade.

Keywords: digital service trade; labor income share; digital service trade barrier; terms of trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/6/5468/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/6/5468/ (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:15:y:2023:i:6:p:5468-:d:1102344

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 ().