Assessing the Static and Dynamic Efficiency of Digital Economy in China: Three Stage DEA–Malmquist Index Based Approach

Abstract

The digital economy, a new economic form, has become an essential economic development engine in various countries. Recently, less research has been conducted on the efficiency of the digital economy, with the majority of studies instead concentrating on the industrial size of the digital economy. Therefore, to quantify and analyze the efficiency of China’s digital economy from 2013 to 2020 from both a static and dynamic perspective, this research utilized a three-stage DEA model and the Malmquist index. The findings demonstrated that after excluding external environmental factors, the scale efficiency value, integrated technical efficiency value, and pure technical efficiency value all significantly increased. This confirmed that external environmental factors uniquely influence the efficiency of the digital economy. The efficiency of the digital economy varies by location, with the eastern region tending to perform the best, and the central region tending to perform the worst. The efficiency decomposition results demonstrated that the positive growth trend of the efficiency of the digital economy is primarily due to technological advancement. Overall, there is a lot of room for growth in China’s digital economy. Each province and city should combine their own capabilities to accelerate digital construction.

The impact of the digital economy on low-carbon innovation in the Yangtze River Delta region

“…Furthermore, Hu (2022) developed a National Digital Economy Competitiveness Index to systematically assess global digital competitiveness [52]. Zhang et al (2023) utilized a three-stage DEA model and the Malmquist index to measure the digital economy output efficiency of various provinces and cities in China [53]. Based on existing research, this study aims to construct an evaluation indicator system for digital economy development at the city level, to objectively reflect the current state of digital economy development in the Yangtze River Delta cities.…”

Dynamic and Static Effects of Digital Services Trading on Economic Growth of World Regions

“…UNCTAD (2022) revealed that despite the worldwide economic crisis that emanated from COVID-19 in 2019, global digital services were remarkably resilient, declining by only 1.8% relative to global traditional services exports, which decreased by 20%. Although empirical and theoretic literature is replete with assertions of the positive impact/effect of digitization processes on various economic activities, a literature review of related literature (for example, Zhang,et al, 2023;Mulenga & Mayondi ,2022;Ying & Gao 2022;Pingfang, 2021, Wang & Choi,2019Thomas-Mini, 2018) seems to suggest that research gaps exist regarding empirical studies on the digital services trading-economic growth nexus of world regions. Therefore, this topic remains an open question.…”