Barriers to Digital Services Trade and Export Efficiency of Digital Services

Xiaomei Wang (), Jia Zhang and Yixin Zhu
Additional contact information
Xiaomei Wang: Business School, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China
Jia Zhang: School of Economics, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872, China
Yixin Zhu: Business School, Shandong University, Weihai 264209, China

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 17, 1-14

Abstract: An international rules system on digital trade that can satisfy multilateral interest appeal has not been formed yet despite the rapid growth of digital services trade. Using the panel data of 39 countries from 2010 to 2019, this study applied the stochastic frontier gravity model to analyze the influence of five types of barriers to digital services trade on the export efficiency of digital services. The research results show that infrastructure and connectivity barriers had no significant effect on the export efficiency of digital services. The barriers to electronic transactions and other barriers that affected the trade of digital services were conducive to improving the export efficiency of digital services. In contrast, the barriers to payment systems and intellectual property rights had a restraining effect on the export efficiency of digital services. The results also show that most countries were more efficient when exporting digital services to their major trade partner countries, which indicates a demand-driven characteristic. Based on these conclusions, we propose five recommendations that are helpful to enhance the export efficiency of digital services.

Keywords: barriers to digital services trade; export efficiency; stochastic frontier gravity model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/17/7517/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/17/7517/ (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:16:y:2024:i:17:p:7517-:d:1467749

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 ().