Input–output Efficiency of China’s Digital Economy: Statistical Measures, Regional Differences, and Dynamic Evolution

With the penetration of next-generation information and communication technologies (ICT), the digital economy industry has become the most important driving force leading and supporting economic and social development. This paper evaluates the input–output efficiency of two core industries of China’s digital economy during the period from 2003 to 2019 and investigates the regional differences and dynamic evolution. First, this paper adopts the true fixed effect stochastic frontier approach (TFE-SFA) model to measure the input–output efficiency of the ICT equipment manufacturing industry and the ICT service industry. Results show that the input–output efficiency of the ICT equipment manufacturing industry is generally higher than that of the ICT service industry, and the efficiency of both industries has remarkable potential to improve. We also explore the regional differences in the input–output efficiency of the digital economy industry. It shows that the differences in the input–output efficiency for China's digital economy industry tend to expand in both the ICT equipment manufacturing industry and the ICT service industry. The differences in the ICT service industry are larger, and the efficiency difference in the digital economy industry comes from inter-regional differences. Finally, this paper analyzes the spatial–temporal dynamic evolution of the digital economy industry by using the methods of kernel density estimation, Moran spatial correlation analysis, and Markov chain state analysis. The state of the input–output efficiency of different provinces’ digital economy industries is relatively stable, and no obvious spatial correlation exists.