Due to the unique geographic characteristics of administrative border areas,these regions often serve as both economic underdeveloped zones and hotspots for environmental pollution.The digital economy offers new opportunities to bal-ance regional development and achieve the"dual carbon"goals.Focusing on administrative border areas as the research object,this study utilizes data from 284 Chinese cities and relevant bor-der counties,employing a two-way fixed effects model to exam-ine the"efficiency improvement"and"carbon reduction"effects of the digital economy.The findings reveal that the digital economy can synergistically achieve the dual objectives of"car-bon reduction and efficiency improvement"in administrative bor-der areas,with the alleviation of market segmentation and ad-ministrative barriers being key mechanisms.Heterogeneity anal-ysis indicates that this effect of the digital economy is related to city size and the level of industrial digitization.Specifically,this effect is only observed in super and mega cities in China,while large,medium and small cities have not yet realized it.Moreo-ver,cities with a higher proportion of industrial digitization ex-hibit more significant effects.These results provide policy impli-cations for further improving digital infrastructure in administra-tive border areas,establishing integrated pollution monitoring platforms,and accelerating the empowerment of the digital econ-omy in these regions.
digital economyadministrative boundary areascarbon emission reductiontotal factor productivity
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