数字经济、省际贸易成本与全国统一大市场

The Digital Economy,Inter-Provincial Trade Costs and a Large National Unified Market

建设全国统一大市场是新时代构建新发展格局的重要内容。本文选取2013—2020年中国30个省份的数据,实证研究数字经济对国内市场统一性的影响及其作用机制。结果发现,数字经济发展水平越高,国内市场统一程度也越高。从省际贸易成本角度切入的机制分析发现,信息搜寻成本越高、物流运输成本越高的省份,当数字经济发展水平提高时,其市场统一程度的提升幅度也越大,说明成本优化是数字经济推动市场统一的作用渠道。门槛回归结果显示,随着数字经济发展水平的提高和省际贸易成本的降低,数字经济推动国内市场统一呈现出边际效应递减的特征。异质性分析发现,对中西部地区而言,数字经济能够显著推动市场统一,而这一效应在东部地区并不显著,说明数字经济能够缩小区域间市场统一性的差距。

Building a large national unified market is an important element in building a new development pattern in the new era.This paper selects data from 30 Chinese provinces from 2013 to 2020 to empirically study the impact of digital economy on the unity of domestic market and its mechanism of action.The results find that the higher the level of digital economy development,the higher the degree of domestic market unification.The mechanism analysis from the perspective of inter-provincial trade costs finds that provinces with higher information search costs and higher logistics and transportation costs also have a greater increase in the degree of market unification when the level of digital economy development increases,indicating that cost optimization is the channel through which the digital economy promotes market unification.The threshold regression results show that as the level of digital economy development increases and the cost of inter-provincial trade decreases,the digital economy driving domestic market unification shows the characteristic of diminishing marginal effect.The heterogeneity analysis finds that for the central and western regions,the digital economy can significantly promote market unification,while this effect is not significant in the eastern regions,indicating that the digital economy can narrow the gap of market unification between regions.