The impact of e-commerce city pilot on the spatial agglomeration of high-end service industry in China

Abstract

We employ the data of 290 cities in China from 2006 to 2019 as a research sample and use the Multi-period DID method to test the policy shock of National E-commerce Demonstration Cities (NEDC) pilots on high-end service industry agglomeration. We find that after becoming pilot cities, the specialized agglomeration level of its high-end service industry increases by about 14.1% on average, and the diversified agglomeration level decreases by about 2.7% on average. And NEDC policy can affect the spatial agglomeration of high-end service industry through three channels: Enhancing the inclusiveness of digital finance, improving the degree of market competition, and promoting regional innovation ability. Moreover, NEDC policy has the characteristics of spatial heterogeneity. NEDC policy has a significant spillover effect on the specialized agglomeration of high-end service industry in the first-tier cities, while the second-tier cities show the characteristics of diversification dispersion. In addition, NEDC policy has a more obvious impact on the agglomeration effect of high-end service industry under the radiation and driving effect of megalopolis.