Digital Economy, Business Environment and Foreign Trade Competitiveness

Abstract

With the global digital technological changes, the digital economy has become the new focus of trade among countries. How to optimise the business environment and strengthen trade competitiveness is also an urgent problem to be solved in deepening opening up. As a result, whether improving the trade environment is conducive to enhancing the positive effect of digital economy on trade competitiveness becomes very important. This paper adopts the macro panel data of 30 provinces across China from 2013 to 2020, and employs the fixed effect model to verify how the business environment regulates the effect of digital economy on trade competitiveness. The paper finds that improving legal provisions, strengthening financial regulation and optimising public services are all conducive to strengthening the positive effect of digital economy on trade competitiveness, and the effect of digital economy on trade competitiveness is not significant in the southern region, while the northern region is in the same direction as the main effect. Based on the above results, this paper puts forward corresponding policy recommendations.