| The long-term existence of market segmentation has seriously affected the development of my country’s economy and society,which has become a general consensus in the academic circles.At present,my country’s market as a whole is undergoing continuous integration,but there is still a certain degree of market segmentation.In May 2020,the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed for the first time to build a new era development pattern of domestic circulation,domestic and international dual circulation,and mutual integration and promotion,which means that my country urgently needs to focus on removing market access restrictions and breaking market segmentation barriers.,to accelerate the formation of a unified national market system.At the same time,the 2020 government work report and the "two sessions" also determined the scope of including information and communication infrastructure construction into the "new infrastructure",and determined an important strategy for creating new advantages in the digital economy.Given that the digital economy has the characteristics of breaking the limitations of time and space distance,whether the development of the digital economy can be used to break the market segmentation and promote the construction of a large domestic circulation pattern has become the main content of this paper.This paper creatively incorporates the development of the digital economy into the research framework of market segmentation,taking 126 typical cities in the country from 2011 to 2018 as samples,and selecting 11 types of commodity price indices to measure market segmentation,in order to better target the market segmentation brought about by market segmentation.Regarding the issue of price discrimination,the digital economy development index in this paper is constructed from four dimensions:digital economic infrastructure,digital payment coverage breadth,digital transaction usage depth,and digital support service level,which is also an innovation of this paper.After analyzing the theoretical mechanism and relevant empirical tests from the perspectives of demand and supply,the main conclusions are as follows: 1.The development of digital economy can significantly reduce the degree of market segmentation.2.From the inspection of the intermediary mechanism,the effect of the development of the digital economy ultimately lies in stimulating the expansion of the scale of demand,resulting in economic and spatial market integration,thereby breaking the market segmentation caused by institutional,natural and technological nature.3.From the perspective of regional heterogeneity and heterogeneity of openness,the digital economy in the eastern coastal areas has developed better and has a higher degree of openness,which has a more obvious effect on breaking market segmentation.4.In addition,from the perspective of spatial effects,the development of digital economy will have a significant negative spatial spillover effect on market segmentation in local and surrounding areas,and indirect spatial effects are stronger than direct spatial effects.Based on the above research conclusions,it is concluded that the development of the digital economy can indeed significantly break the market segmentation and help to build a national unified market with a large domestic cycle.Finally,from the four aspects of institutional premise,material basis,influence channels and practical ways,relevant policy suggestions are put forward for using the digital economy to break the market segmentation and build a national unified market with a domestic cycle. |
