Has Information Infrastructure Construction Promoted the Optimization and Upgrading of Industrial Structure? Evidence for a Panel Data Analysis of China

Industrial structure optimization and upgrading driven by information infrastructure facilitates resource-efficient allocation, which is crucial for advancing China’s economic development toward sustainability. This paper constructs a simplified multi-sector general equilibrium model to theoretically reveal the mechanism of information infrastructure’s impact on industrial structure. Theoretical results indicate that among various factors, information infrastructure investment scale, its effect on industrial sector factor productivity, and the capital factor output elasticity of industrial sectors are three key determinants of industrial structure rationalization. Based on this, the paper uses China’s provincial panel data from 2009 to 2022 and adopts the fixed effect estimation method to empirically verify the theoretical conclusions. Empirical results show that information infrastructure characteristics play a pivotal role in promoting industrial structure optimization. They exert a positive effect on the free flow of production factors across industrial sectors and efficient resource allocation. Specifically, fixed information infrastructure has a stronger impact on industrial structure rationalization than mobile information infrastructure. Neither mobile nor fixed information infrastructure exerts a significant impact on industrial structure upgrading. To fully leverage information infrastructure and its investment, further efforts are needed to strengthen their role in high-value-added industrialization and high-tech industrialization, thereby consolidating the foundation for sustainable economic development.