Smart Cities and Global Value Chain Upgrading: Evidence from China

Abstract

China has been on a new journey pursuing high-quality development, an important element of which is global value chain (GVC) upgrading. The smart city pilot policy, which aims at reshaping the urban development model in China, is carried out and regarded conducive to achieving high-quality development. Nevertheless, regarding whether and how smart cities could promote GVC upgrading, research is scant. We adopted the approach of time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) and used a dataset that encompassed 174 prefecture-level cities between 2005 and 2017 to investigate the impact of China’s smart city pilot policy on the GVC upgrading of cities. The findings indicate that, firstly, GVC upgrading is significantly enhanced by building smart cities in China. Secondly, this favorable influence on GVC upgrading is mainly through channels of informatization, innovation, and industrial structure adjustment. Thirdly, the influence is more pronounced in eastern cities and cities with better conditions in terms of human capital, fiscal capacity, and information infrastructure. This research provides evidence and policy implications for China to move forward with the smart city establishment in a bid to upgrade GVCs and achieve high-quality growth.

Optimizing Last-Mile Delivery: A Multi-Criteria Approach with Automated Smart Lockers, Capillary Distribution and Crowdshipping

“…Furthermore, sustainable mobility is described as the movement or transport of people or objects that is compatible with economic growth, social cohesion [32,33] and environmental protection [34] while incurring low social, environmental and energy costs. Choosing automated smart lockers would have a positive impact on the city's economy and ecology, including the following contributions issued in this study that promotes sustainable mobility in city centers [35]:…”