The Impacts of Cross-Border Data Flow Rules on Digital Service Trade under the Framework of RTAs
Based on bilateral digital service export data from 2010-2021 for 50 representative global econo-mies,this paper employs a gravity model to empirically test the trade creation effects of cross-border data flow rules.The results show that the higher the commitment level of cross-border data flow rules in the RTAs signed be-tween contracting parties,the larger the scale of bilateral digital services trade,the more significant the trade crea-tion effect.After subdividing the cross-border data flow rules into data flow rules,data localization rules,and data protection rules,it is found that data localization rules have a stronger promoting effect on digital service trade.Compared to other sectors,the cross-border data flow rules have a stronger trade promoting effect on financial serv-ices.The higher the overall economic freedom level of contracting parties,the smaller the promoting effect of cross-border data flow rules on digital service trade.The greater the gap of data regulatory environments between contracting parties,the more cross-border data flow rules can promote bilateral digital service trade.The mecha-nism test shows that cross-border data flow rules can improve the digital services trade by reducing trade cost,shortening institutional distance and expanding the two-way FDI scale of exporting countries.The findings of this paper confirm the trade creation effect of cross-border data flow rules,providing empirical evidence for China to effectively formulate open policies on digital service trade and actively participate in global digital governance.
cross-border data flow rulesdigital service tradeRTAstrade creation effect
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
