Journal of Statistics and Information

As a new economic form, the digital economy is a key force, which narrows regional development gaps, supports economic stably growth and accelerates the upgrading of industrial structure.From the four dimensions of digital infrastructure, digital industry development, digital economy application, and digital talent environment, an indicator system for the development level of the provincial digital economy is constructed, and the entropy method is used to measure the development level of the digital economy.On this basis, a Spatial Durbin Model is constructed using the nested weight matrix of geographic and economic distances, which analyzes the impact of digital economy on industrial structure upgrading in 30 provinces in China during 2011—2020 from the perspective of spatial effect.The results show that:(1) The upgrading industrial structure and digital economy show positive spatial autocorrelation.They form basically the same spatial agglomeration areas in terms of spatial distribution.Concretely the “high-high” agglomeration areas for digital economy and industrial structure upgrading are basically located in the Beijing-Tianjin region and the Yangtze River Delta region, and the “low-low” agglomeration areas are located in the central and western regions.(2) In general, the development of the province's digital economy has a significant positive impact on the province's industrial structure.However, due to the unbalanced development of the digital economy, the weak regional correlation of the digital industry, and the unsmooth flow of data elements, it has no remarkable influence in neighboring provinces.(3) From the regional perspective, in the digital economy development level with “high-high” characteristics of the agglomeration areas, the digital economy obviously promotes the upgrading of the industrial structure of this province and neighboring provinces.In the “low-low” agglomeration areas, the development of the digital economy has only significantly promoted the upgrading of the industrial structure in the same province.Therefore, policy suggestions are proposed in terms of optimizing the spatial development pattern, activating data elements, and formulating development strategies in different regions.On the one hand, this research enriches the dimensions of the digital economy indicator system, and provides some reference for accurately measuring the development level of the digital economy.On the other hand, this paper deeply analyzes the spatial spillover effect of digital economy on industrial structure upgrading, achieving a reasonable supplement to relevant research conclusions.