Digital Factor and Its Contribution to China's Economic Growth:Evidence from Artificial Intelligence Patents in China
The digital economy represents a distinct mode of production succeeding both the agricultural and industrial economies.It constitutes a novel economic paradigm and has pro-gressively emerged as a pivotal driver of global economic expansion and advancement.Within the digital economy era,digital factor embodies a novel category of production fac-tors characterized by intelligence attributes.It serves as intelligent substrates capable of autonomous knowledge creation,gradually supplanting and augmenting human cognitive labor.This paper employs a dataset encompassing 30 provincial administrative divisions in China spanning from 2012 to 2019 to scrutinize the influx of the digital factor,gauged through artificial intelligence patent statistics,and assess their impact on China's economic growth.The findings reveal that digital factor has notably enhanced the rate of economic growth and total factor productivity within China,fostering sustained economic expansion.These results withstand rigorous endogeneity controls and robustness tests.Mechanistically,digital factor propels China's economic growth by fostering knowledge creation,and facilitating industrial structural transformation.Further disaggregation illus-trates that the influence of digital factor on rate of economic growth is particularly pro-nounced in eastern regions and areas characterized by high digital factor input levels.Con-versely,in central and western regions,and locales boasting lower total factor productivity levels,the impact of digital factor on overall productivity is more conspicuous.This paper corroborates the"extraordinary contribution"of digital factor to China's economic growth both theoretically and empirically.It furnishes recommendations and insights to enhance China's capacity in leveraging digital factor and propel the rapid development of the digital economy.
Digital FactorDigital EconomyEconomic GrowthArtificial IntelligenceAgent
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
