As a new form of opening up, cross-border e-commerce plays an important role in stabilizing import and export and absorbing employment. It is also one of the important ways to promote a new development pattern with “big domestic cycle as the main body and dual domestic and international cycles promoting each other” in China. The development of cross-border e-commerce in China is deeply guided by national policies. As an extension of the supply-side structural reform, the Chinese government has established multiple batches of cross-border e-commerce comprehensive experimental areas since 2015.

This paper attempts to evaluate the policy effect of cross-border e-commerce reform in China. It adopts the data of China’s A-share listed companies from 2011 to 2019, and takes wage income as the starting point. It is found that the cross-border e-commerce reform has significantly improved the average wage income of employees in experimental areas. The heterogeneity analysis finds that the cross-border e-commerce reform mainly improves the wage income of employees in the sample groups such as the eastern region and high internet penetration areas, the secondary industry and industry and commerce, small-scale companies, private companies and low-wage companies. The mechanism test results show that: On the one hand, the preferential tax policy on the supply side significantly reduces the tax rate and financing constraints of companies in experimental areas, and then improves employees’ wage income. On the other hand, the company’s behavior reflects the demand-side changes. The company’s expansion of employment scale and improvement of talent structure are important channels for the cross-border e-commerce reform to improve employees’ wage income. The expansion analysis finds that the cross-border e-commerce reform significantly improves the income level of individuals and families and alleviates the relative poverty of experimental areas.

The academic value of this paper is mainly reflected in the following aspects: Firstly, cross-border e-commerce is a new form of economic opening and an extension of the open perspective of traditional foreign investment and foreign trade. This paper finds that the policy plays an important role in improving wage income from the perspective of cross-border e-commerce reform for the first time, which enriches the quantitative research on the determinants of wage income to a certain extent. Secondly, the conclusion of this paper affirms the positive role of China’s cross-border e-commerce supply-side structural reform, provides evidence and explanation for China’s adherence to institutional economic opening, and can provide reference and suggestions for the rapid development of domestic cross-border e-commerce and its reform. Thirdly, this paper studies the exogenous cases of China’s cross-border e-commerce reform, examines the development of cross-border e-commerce from the perspective of national policies, and uses the DID method to objectively evaluate the causal effect of cross-border e-commerce reform on wage income, effectively avoiding the endogenous interference.