Digital Technology, Upgrading of Service Industry and High-Quality Development of Regional Economy
Vigorously developing digital technology and promoting the transformation and upgrading of the service industry is a major strategic task to accelerate and coordinate the high-quality development of the economy. In this context, it is important to systematically answer the question of whether the digital economy can drive the high-quality development of the regional economy through the upgrading of the service industry. Further, it is of great practical significance to reveal the mechanism of the upgrading of the service industry in the process of high-quality economic development driven by digital technology at the city level.This paper, using a two-way fixed-effects model, empirically examines the impact of digital technology on the high-quality development of the regional economy and the underlying mechanism based on the data from the China City Statistical Yearbook from 2010 to 2018. The results show that digital technology significantly enhances the high-quality development of the regional economy, and this conclusion still holds after a series of endogeneity tests and robustness tests. Heterogeneity analysis shows that digital technology exerts a more significant positive effect on the high-quality economic development in the eastern and central regions, while the effect is not significant in the western and northeastern regions. The mechanism test shows that digital technology enhances the high-quality development of the regional economy by improving the level of employment and the resilience of the industrial chain. Further analysis shows that the high-quality development of the regional economy may rely more on life services than on new business models such as productive services. This paper expands on the previous literature in the following three aspects. First, the impact of digital technology on the high-quality development of the regional economy is examined by using a two-way fixed-effects model, which not only enriches the empirical analysis of the economic effects of digital technology but also expands the research on the factors influencing the high-quality development of the regional economy. Second, the mechanism of the digital economy on the high-quality development of the regional economy is verified from the aspects of generating service employment opportunities and enhancing the resilience of the innovation chain of the service industry, which provides practical policy suggestions for giving full play to the high-quality development of the regional economy by digital technology. Third, this paper adopts the method of indicator system as the measurement of digital technology and regional high-quality economic development, which can more accurately measure the characteristics of digital technology in regional differences compared with previous studies.
digital technologyhigh-quality development of the economyupgrading of service industryemployment of service industryindustrial chain resilience of service industry
万方数据
维普
