Exploring the Immigrant‐Trade Links in Cross‐Border e‐Commerce: Evidence From Chinese Immigrants in the United States

ABSTRACT Unlike traditional offline trade, which adopts the inter‐business transaction mode, cross‐border e‐commerce (CBEC) operates in a mode where exporting businesses transact directly with consumers via online marketplaces, thereby significantly altering the manifestation of immigrant‐trade links. In this paper, we explore the immigrant‐trade links in CBEC for the first time. To address the scarcity of CBEC data, we utilise data on CBEC retail orders from China to the United States sourced from a prominent logistics company. Our research indicates that Chinese immigrants in each US state significantly improve the scale of CBEC imports of Chinese products, employing instrumental variables such as newly constructed railroad mileage in the 19th century. However, the logic of internal channels, namely, the trade cost channel and the preference channel, has undergone a great evolution relative to the situation in offline trade. On the one hand, instead of popularising the mother tongue, transmitting product information, and acting as trade intermediaries, sharing online purchasing methods of home‐country products has become an important aspect of the trade cost channel. On the other hand, the preference channel may exert greater influence because of the long‐tail effect, leading to a reversal in the relative dominance between the two channels.