| The issue of regional economic disparity has been existed for a long time in our country,and unbalanced economic development of each region has become common understanding.Studies have shown that a moderate gap will promote economic growth,but if the gap is too large to be solved for a long time,it will hinder the effective allocation of resources in the economy,and eventually drag down the overall economic development,resulting in a decline in the level of social welfare.Digital economy provides an important opportunity for balanced development,and plays a crucial role in narrowing regional economic disparities.On the basis of combing the relevant literature of digital economy,regional economic gap and digital economy’s influence on regional economic gap,this paper expounds the mechanism of digital economy’s influence on regional economic gap and puts forward the research hypothesis.Relevant data at the provincial level from2011 to 2020 were selected to construct the digital economy indicator system,calculate the digital economy development index,and carry out statistical analysis;The Dagum Gini coefficient decomposition method was used to estimate the inter-provincial economic gap from 2002 to 2020.Empirically,the general panel model with no spatial interaction terms and the spatial Durbin model are selected to study the impact of digital economy development on regional economic gap,and the spatial spillover effect decomposition is carried out for the whole sample,sub-region and sub-dimension.The results are helpful to formulate policies for coordinated regional economic development.The following conclusions are drawn:First,the overall scale of our digital economy has achieved a high speed of development.Except for some provinces,the digital development index is increasing year by year,and the difference among provinces is obvious;The provinces with high development level of digital economy are concentrated in the eastern coastal areas.The northeast and western regions are relatively backward,but present a certain advantage of late development,and the development of digital economy has a certain degree of agglomeration.Second,the overall economic gap between provinces presents an inverted U-shaped trend of first rising and then declining.The internal economic gap in the eastern and western regions is the most prominent,and the gap between the eastern and western regions is the largest,showing a decreasing trend.Our economic gap is mainly derived from the inter-regional gap;Third,the development of digital economy has a significant negative effect and spatial spillover effect on the economic gap between provinces,which can narrow the economic gap.It can be concluded from the analysis of regional spatial effect that the improvement of digital economy level will reduce the economic gap between east,central and west regions and the economic gap within the region.According to the spatial effect decomposition of dimension,the application of digital technology has the strongest effect on the narrowing of economic gap.According to the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward relevant policy suggestions: First,all regions should develop digital economy differently and jointly improve the level of digital economy;Second,strengthen the base of digital infrastructure to improve the quality of data elements;Third,encourage technology diffusion and knowledge spillover to smooth inter-regional communication channels.Fourth,we should properly optimize influencing factors and promote balanced economic development. |
