关键词: 互联网, 工业结构, 生产率, 资源配置, 门限回归

Abstract: Based on the natural experiment of the commercial use of the Internet of China in 1995, this paper adopts a difference in difference method to empirically investigate the impact of the Internet on the upgrading of regional industrial structure. The study finds that the increase of Internet penetration has significantly promoted the upgrading of regional industrial structure. This effect has been gradually enhanced after the commercialization of Internet in China, and the above conclusions are still robust after using a variety of estimation methods. Grouping test shows that the impact of the Internet on the upgrading of regional industrial structure has obvious regional differences, which significantly promotes the upgrading of industrial structure in the eastern and central regions, but has little impact on the western region. The industrial structure upgrading effect of Internet is more obvious in areas with low level of nationalization. Further channel tests show that the increase of Internet penetration affects the upgrading of regional industrial structure through the mechanisms of “productivity enhancement effect” and “resource allocation effect”. Finally, the threshold test shows that the impact of Internet on the upgrading of regional industrial structure is constrained by the regional R&D investment scale, human capital level，intellectual property protection intensity and market segmentation degree. This paper provides a new explanation for understanding the dynamic changes of industrial structure in China in recent years from the perspective of Internet policy changes, and it enriches the theoretical research of Internet economic performance evaluation.

Key words: Internet, Industrial Structure, Productivity, Resource Allocation, Threshold Regression