| At present,China’s economy has shifted from a high-speed growth stage to a high-quality development stage.How to realize the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure and promote the optimization of economic structure is an urgent problem to be solved.Digital economy has become the most active field in China’s economic development,and it is also the stabilizer of China’s economic growth and the booster of industrial structure upgrading.The “14th Five-Year Plan” clearly points out that China’s digital economy will turn to a new stage of deepening application,standardized development and HP sharing,which will further release its role in the upgrading of industrial structure.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the impact of digital economy on the upgrading of industrial structure.Firstly,this paper combs the relevant literature of digital economy and industrial structure upgrading,defines the concept of digital economy and industrial structure upgrading,and analyzes the measurement method of digital economy development level.Secondly,it analyzes and combs the relevant theoretical issues of digital economy and industrial structure,puts forward four research hypotheses of this paper,and conducts in-depth empirical analysis.Firstly,the principal component analysis method is used to measure the digital economy development index of 279 cities in China from 2012 to 2019,and it is used as an explanatory variable.At the same time,the industrial structure hierarchy coefficient is used as an explained variable to test the impact of digital economy development on industrial structure upgrading.Based on theoretical analysis and research hypotheses,with the help of panel linear model and spatial panel model,this paper empirically examines the promotion effect,influence mechanism and spatial spillover effect of digital economy on industrial structure upgrading,and conducts regional heterogeneity test and robustness test.The empirical research finds that: first,the digital economy has a positive effect on the upgrading of industrial structure.On the whole,the regression results using the interaction term between the number of national Internet users and the number of telephones per 10,000 people in cities in 1984 as an instrumental variable show that the development of digital economy has significantly promoted the upgrading of urban industrial structure;secondly,the mechanism test results show that the digital economy can not only directly promote the optimization and adjustment of industrial structure,but also indirectly promote the upgrading of industrial structure by increasing technology introduction,promoting technological innovation and optimizing human capital.Third,the impact of digital economy on industrial structure upgrading is heterogeneous.In terms of regions,the digital economy promotes the upgrading of industrial structure in the eastern region,but the promotion effect in the central and western regions is not obvious or even inhibits the upgrading of industrial structure;from the perspective of urban level differences and urban scale levels,the digital economy has a stronger role in promoting the upgrading of industrial structure in developed cities with higher urban levels and larger cities;fourth,the digital economy has a significant positive spatial spillover effect on the upgrading of industrial structure.The test results show that whether from the perspective of point estimation or spatial effect decomposition,the digital economy will have a positive indirect impact on the upgrading of the industrial structure of surrounding cities while promoting the upgrading of the industrial structure of the region,that is,there is a spatial spillover effect.Based on the above analysis,the corresponding countermeasures and suggestions are put forward from the perspectives of improving the development level of digital economy,strengthening independent innovation,taking into account the introduction of foreign investment,implementing talent development strategy,coordinating regional digital economy development layout and strengthening inter-city industrial economic cooperation. |
