On the Role of the Digital Industry in Reshaping Urban Economic Structure: the Case of Hangzhou, China

Xuliang Zhang, Chenxiang Elaine Ji, Haixia Zhang, Yuchen Wei and Jianwei Jin
Additional contact information
Xuliang Zhang: Center for Research of Private Economy, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Chenxiang Elaine Ji: School of Public Finance and Taxation, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, Hangzhou, China
Haixia Zhang: School of Tourism Management and Urban-rural Planning, Zhejiang Gongshang University, Hangzhou, China
Yuchen Wei: School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
Jianwei Jin: Hangzhou City Planning and Design Academy, Hangzhou, China

Journal of Economic Analysis, 2023, vol. 2, issue 4, 123-139

Abstract: The digital economy industry plays a transformative role in reshaping the global production networks, the local division of production, and the integration and innovation of business forms. However, to what extent the industry enables the high-quality development and upgrading of urban economies is unclear. Based on the census data of digital economy enterprises in Hangzhou in 2008, 2013 and 2018, this paper verifies the characteristics of the digital economy industry and its enabling mechanism for high-quality urban economic development. It is found that: firstly, the digital economy industry has three main forms for the economy, namely, the sharing, scale and scope economy. Secondly, the industry has four major mechanisms to improve the quality of urban economies. That is, it can restructure the global industrial division of labor and value chains, promote the transformation of scale economy from the supply side to the demand side, enable the softening and servitization of industrial structure, and generate the scale of economies. This paper thus contributes to understanding the evolution of enterprise organizational structure and industrial competitiveness and the endogenous technological change under the digital economy.

Keywords: Digital economy industry; division of labor derivation; agglomeration evolution; urban development; Hangzhou (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.anserpress.org/journal/jea/2/4/42/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.anserpress.org/journal/jea/2/4/42 (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:bba:j00001:v:2:y:2023:i:4:p:123-139:d:120

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Analysis is currently edited by Ramona Wang

More articles in Journal of Economic Analysis from Anser Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Ramona Wang ().