A study on the impact of the digital economy development in RCEP countries on China’s export efficiency: Based on Stochastic Frontier Gravity Model

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study builds a system of indicators to gauge the growth of the digital economy and employs the entropy weight approach to gauge its state across the 15 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) member countries. Then, using a panel dataset of China’s export trade to RCEP member countries from 2010 to 2022 as the study sample, an empirical analysis of the impact of the RCEP member countries’ level of digital economy development on China’s export trade is conducted based on the stochastic frontier gravity model. The empirical findings indicate that the main cause of the discrepancy between the actual and potential trade volume of China’s exports to RCEP countries is the degree of development of the digital economy as a trade inefficiency term. The level of growth of its digital economy is positively correlated with China’s exporting status, and it indicates that China’s level of digital growth, which restricts trade efficiency, is a contributing cause to the inefficiency of trade. As importing nations, RCEP members’ levels of digital economy development are negative, which indicates how the expansion of the digital economy among RCEP members has improved China’s export efficiency.
In addition, the author findS that the role of the digital economy in improving the efficiency of China’s export trade became more pronounced during COVID-19 pandemic. This article proposes corresponding policy implications based on these findings.