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1408Due to the pronounced divergence of interests among economic entities in the field of digital economic and trade governance, there exist marked differences in the text of digital trade rules concluded under different Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). As a result, there are substantial disparities in the legal binding force and enforceability of digital trade rules in different RTAs. In this context, a precise assessment of the depth of digital trade rules in RTAs and a further exploration of their impact on services value chain linkages can not only provide a practical solution for strengthening the resilience of GVCs, but also align with China’s current development philosophy of building a new system for higher-level open economy focusing on institutional openness.
Based on the measurement of the depth of digital trade rules and disaggregated data of 19 service industries in 65 economies from 2000 to 2018, this paper tests the impact of the depth of digital trade rules on services value chain linkages. The findings reveal that the enhancement of the depth of digital trade rules promotes services value chain linkages through three channels: regulatory convergence, transaction cost reduction, and productivity improvement. The heterogeneity test of countries and industries indicates that the positive effect of the depth of digital trade rules is more significant for non-digital-intensive service industries and economies at the same stage of development. The heterogeneity test of clauses indicates that the promotion effect of enhancing the depth of digital openness rules, privacy protection rules, and cooperative inclusiveness rules on services value chain linkages decreases sequentially, and repeatedly formulating digital trade rules will weaken this promotion effect. The heterogeneity test of value chain linkages reveals that the depth of digital trade rules has a more significant positive effect on the forward services value chain linkages. The extensibility test indicates that only the enhancement of the depth of privacy protection rules contributes to promoting Sino-foreign services value chain linkages.
The contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it reconstructs the evaluation system for digital trade rules from three aspects: provision coverage, legal binding force, and specific provision deepening forms. Second, it connects the depth of digital trade rules with services value chain linkages using the gravity model, and discusses the influence mechanism of the depth of digital trade rules on services value chain linkages. Third, it conducts heterogeneity tests from different dimensions, and explores the impact of the depth of digital trade rules on Sino-foreign services value chain linkages. The conclusions provide targeted countermeasures and suggestions for China to align with high-standard economic and trade rules.
