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

Abstract

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.

Keywords

• diversified agglomeration
• e‐commerce
• high‐end service industry
• specialized agglomeration