A Study On The Impact Of RTA Digital Trade Rules On Cross-Border Data Elements Flow

As the digital economy enters the stage of rapid development of artificial intelligence and big data technology,the importance of data as the core and basic elements of digital technology,information network and digital services has become prominent,and the cross-border flow of data has become the focus of a new round of international economic and trade rules.In addition,data sovereignty and cross-border data governance have also become issues of close concern to all countries(regions)in the world.As cross-border data flow brings increasingly prominent problems to the security and privacy of countries and individuals,countries have raised their barriers to cross-border data flow,which will have a certain impact on the cross-border flow of data elements.Therefore,solving the trade barriers related to the cross-border flow of data elements is an important direction of research.Based on the 2021 version of the input-output table(ICIO)provided by OECD Ti VA database,the inflow and outflow of the ‘telecom’ industry in 45 industries from home country to partner country in total 65 countries during 2002-2018 were summarized to obtain the cross-border flow of data at the four-dimensional level of ‘home country-partner country-industry-year’.Based on the score of the digital trade rules provided by the effective Rtas in the TAPED database from 2002 to 2018,the total was added and divided by the total number of terms to describe the depth level of the digital trade rules.Then,using the cosine similarity natural language text processing method in Python,the American template similarity index of the RTA digital trade rules was constructed.Finally,we empirically examine the impact of RTA digital trade rules on the cross-border flow of data.Through research,this paper finds that:(1)The similarity between the depth level of RTA digital trade rules and the American template will significantly promote the cross-border flow of data elements,and a variety of robustness tests such as replacement of explanatory variables,explained variables,sample intervals,fixed effect combinations and instrumental variables have reached consistent conclusions.(2)In the heterogeneity test,the heterogeneity of terms indicates that the depth of data terms in the service section inhibits the cross-border flow of data.National(regional)heterogeneity indicates that RTA digital trade rules have the most significant promoting effect on cross-border data flow between developed and developed countries.The type heterogeneity of RTAs indicates that the American template similarity of bilateral RTAs has no significant positive effect on cross-border data flow.(3)The mechanism test shows that RTA digital trade rules promote the cross-border flow of data elements by reducing the cross-border cost of data and commercial psychological preparedness.However,the depth level affects the cross-border flow of data by narrowing the digital technology gap between countries and exacerbating the digital technology gap between two countries through the similarity of American template.(4)The moderating effect shows that the greater the distance difference between the two countries’ institutions,the more unfavorable RTA digital trade rules to promote the cross-border flow of data.Eventually,based on all the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward reasonable policy suggestions on how to promote the cross-border flow of data elements through data governance from the perspective of global digital economy governance.