Digital economy, misallocation of resource elements and unified big market

Abstract

Using the panel data of Chinese provinces from 2011 to 2021 as observational samples, this paper examines the impact of digital economy on market segmentation and its mechanism. The results show that digital economy has a significant inhibition effect on market segmentation, and this conclusion is reliable through various methods. In the heterogeneity analysis, the inhibition effect of digital economy on market segmentation in different regions presents a step difference of “West > Middle > East”; The inhibition effect of industrial digitalization on market segmentation is more obvious than that of system parts such as infrastructure carriers and digital industrialization. In the mechanism path test, the misallocation of resource factors plays a part of the mediating effect, and the misallocation of capital factors is the main form of the mediating effect of resource factor mismatch, while the mediating effect of labor factor mismatch is not obvious. Further discussion, the digital economy also has a significant inhibitory effect on market segmentation in the surrounding areas through the spatial spillover effect. Based on this, it is necessary to amplify the dividend effect of the digital economy, optimize the allocation of resource factors, and accelerate the construction of a unified national large market.