电商下乡促进了县域经济增长吗?

Has E-commerce Going Rural Propelled County-level Economic Growth?

以电子商务为代表的现代化商品流通渠道建设是当前农村经济发展的新动能。利用2013—2018年县域数据,以“电子商务进农村综合示范县”为自然实验,采用多期PSM-DID方法探讨了电商下乡对县域经济增长的影响。研究结果显示,电商下乡对县域经济增长具有显著的促进作用。异质性分析表明,电商下乡对中部、西部和东北地区县域经济增长具有显著的正向影响,对经济发展落后、财政依赖度高、信息化水平低以及产业结构不合理的县域具有更加明显的经济拉动效应。进一步研究发现,电商下乡推动了县域第一产业和第二产业的发展,且主要通过提高地区农业生产率、吸引企业进入以及改善融资环境产生影响。因此,应加快推进电子商务在农村的发展,把以电子商务为代表的现代流通渠道建设与电商下乡试点地区的特色农业和制造业相结合,进一步探索县域传统产业与数字经济的融合方式,以促进县域经济增长。

Modernized commodity circulation channel promotion epitomized by e-commerce is the new growth driver for rural economic development.This paper employed county-level data during the 2013-2018 period,conducted comprehensive e-commerce-driven model county experiments,and adopted the multi-stage PSM-DID methodology to study the influence of e-commerce going rural on county-level economic growth.Results show that e-commerce going rural does significantly promote county-level economic growth.Heterogeneous analysis shows that e-commerce going rural has significant positive influence on the county-level economic development in central,western and northeastern regions of China,and has a more prominent leverage effect upon counties that economically fall behind,heavily rely on public finance,and suffer from low IT application and unsound industrial structure.Further,e-commerce going rural catalyzes the growth of the primary and secondary industries.E-commerce going rural works by raising rural labor productivity,magnetizing enterprises and improving financing environment.Therefore,measures should be taken to speed up the promotion of e-commerce in rural areas.Specifically,efforts should be made to integrate the e-commerce-themed modernized circulation channel promotion and the unique agriculture and manufacturing in pilot areas of e-commerce going rural to explore how to bridge county-level industries and digital economy,so as to boost county-level economic growth.