Empirical study on the impact of e-commerce level on the participation and positions of countries in the global value chain

At the end of the 20th century, with the rise of the Internet, the emergence of e-commerce has brought new ideas for the promotion of global value chains. In this context, this paper examines the impact of e-commerce on the global value chain position of participating countries. This paper constructs an e-commerce development index from three aspects: Internet infrastructure, e-commerce application ability and trade facilitation. Using the data from the World Bank and the Universal Postal Union, it calculates the e-commerce development index of 46 countries from 2007 to 2021, and analyzes the current situation of e-commerce development in the sample countries. In addition, this paper uses UIBE GVC database to measure the global value chain position index and participation index of the 36 countries as explained variables, takes e-commerce development index as explanatory variables, and makes empirical analysis by using fixed effect model. The results show that e-commerce can significantly promote the status of each country in the global value chain. The promotion effect on higher income countries is not significant.