Evaluating Industrial Belt Growth and E-Commerce Expansion Through a Malmquist TFP Framework

Cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) encompasses internet-mediated transactions to acquire and deliver goods and services across the border. In the following research, the objective is to evaluate the economic development and contribution of CBEC on industrial zones by employing a new Malmquist Total Factor Productivity (TFP) technique. To this end, the study will use nonparametric linear programming techniques to create an efficient Malmquist TFP index that provides efficiency evaluation, ranking of different regions, and time series analysis. We employed Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to effectively compare industrial transfer effects in several regions. Our findings show that industrial belts supported by infrastructure and other fixed assets and centralized urban areas are the major beneficiaries of industrial productivity and international trade. Launched in Jiangsu Province, the results reveal that cities within major economic axes, including the Yangtze River Economic Belt and the Shanghai-Nanjing Economic Circle, experience the most rapid CBEC transactions. Besides, the study also reveals that there are regions where government support facilitates logistics and e-commerce infrastructure, which indicates that those regions seem to be more coherent in developing e-commerce and modern logistics. These findings further underpin the centrality of industrial belts in the growth of the economy and highlight the need to align CBEC strategy to the development of these belts.