The Impact Of Barriers To Digital Trade In Services On Total Factor Productivity

In recent years,digital transformation has become a new driving force to global trade,especially for trade in services.Integrating the digital economy and service trade,digital trade in service has the aggregated power on promoting the total factor productivity.Also,the development of digital service trade has brought new opportunities for global economic growth.However,for reasons such as protecting their own industries and avoiding national or personal security risks,countries have formulated many policies and measures to restrict digital service trade,and the barriers to digital service trade have risen.These restrictive policies increase the transaction costs of digital service trade,inhibit the free competition in the digital service market,as well as hinder the digital transformation and upgrading of the global economy,eventually lead to weaken the growth brought by the digital economy.Therefore,examining how digital service trade barriers affect national total factor productivity is conducive to enable governments to clear up the benefits and disadvantages of digital service trade restrictive policies.Hence governments can make targeted adjustments to policies,strengthen international digital service trade cooperation,and better promote economic growth in the context of digital era.This paper firstly defines the concepts of digital service trade,digital service trade barrier and total factor productivity in accordance with UNCTAD and OECD definition,and briefly analyzes the current international situation.Then,it reviews the existing literature to make a theoretical analysis of the impact of digital service trade barriers on total factor productivity,and deduces the transmission mechanism of technological innovation and the heterogeneous effect for the developing and developed country.To examine the theoretical hypothesis,this paper constructs the panel data of 50 countries in the world from 2014 to 2020,takes the digital service trade restriction index as the independent variable and total factor productivity as the dependent variable,successively carries out benchmark test and mechanism test on the relationship between digital service trade barrier and total factor productivity.This paper runs robustness check by replacing the measurement methods of total factor productivity and digital service trade barrier.The results show that:(1)at present,the regulatory environment of international digital service trade is becoming more and more strict,the barriers are increasing year by year,and the barrier intensity has a "North-South difference",and the barrier in developed countries is rising faster than that in developing countries.The growth rate of digital service trade in developing countries is faster than that in developed countries,but the volume is far lower than that in developed countries.ICT services is leading the growth of digital service trade;(2)The benchmark regression results show that a country’s digital service trade barrier has a significant negative effect on total factor productivity.For every 1 increase in digital service trade barrier,the country’s total factor productivity decreases by 0.369.And restrictive measures in different fields have a negative effect on the growth of total factor productivity;(3)Digital service trade barrier has a negative impact on national innovation efficiency,and acts on total factor productivity through technological innovation as an intermediary variable;(4)The heterogeneity analysis manifests that,firstly,the negative effect intensity of digital service trade barriers on total factor productivity is different between developing and developed countries.Developing countries are more negatively affected by digital service trade barriers.Secondly,the impact varies by policy type.Infrastructure connectivity has a significant negative impact on total factor productivity,while the impact of electronic transactions,payment systems,intellectual property rights and other barriers is not significant.