How does digital trade development affect carbon emissions? Evidence from China

IF 7.9 2区经济学 Q1 ECONOMICS

Economic Analysis and Policy Pub Date : 2025-02-06 DOI:10.1016/j.eap.2025.02.004

Mengyang Yang, Yawen Liu, Jingle Wang, Xiaobin Tang

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Digital trade development (DTD) contributes to green economic growth across various regions and is crucial in coping with climate change. Using data from China's province-level of 2011–2021, we explore how the regional DTD affects carbon emissions (CE). Results indicate that DTD significantly affects CE with a U-shape in provinces and shows positive spatial spillover effects. Robustness checks validate our findings. Mechanism analyses indicate that DTD affects CE through expanding digital human capital, fostering green technological innovation, and upgrading the industrial structure. Further discussions demonstrate that DTD in eastern and central provinces illustrates notable spillover effects. The eastern region has an inverted U-shape, and the central region is U-shaped. Under the threshold variables of digital human capital, digital finance, and carbon emission intensity, DTD affects CE, revealing clear nonlinear effects. These results support the idea that DTD helps to decrease CE and offers valuable insights into the coordinated development of digitalization and low-carbonization among regions.

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来源期刊

Economic Analysis and Policy ECONOMICS-

CiteScore

9.80

自引率

9.20%

发文量

231

审稿时长

93 days

期刊介绍： Economic Analysis and Policy (established 1970) publishes articles from all branches of economics with a particular focus on research, theoretical and applied, which has strong policy relevance. The journal also publishes survey articles and empirical replications on key policy issues. Authors are expected to highlight the main insights in a non-technical introduction and in the conclusion.