Research on the Relationship between Cross-border E-commerce and Traditional International Trade Models——Complementary effect or substitution effect

Abstract

The rapid development of cross-border e-commerce has had a profound impact on the traditional international trade pattern. However, whether the relationship between the two is one of substitution or complementarity has not yet reached a consensus in existing research. This paper focuses on the core issue of "complementary effect or substitution effect", and by using the data of China's traditional goods trade from 2009 to 2024 and the transaction data of cross-border e-commerce from 2015 to 2024, conducts a preliminary investigation into the relationship between the two through trend synergy analysis and Spearman's rank correlation test. The research findings show that during the sample period, there is a significant positive correlation between the transaction volume of cross-border e-commerce and the total import and export volume of traditional goods trade. This result indicates that the rapid growth of cross-border e-commerce has not been accompanied by a systematic contraction of traditional trade. At the macro total volume level, the two tend to have a complementary and synergistic relationship. Their complementarity may stem from the incremental expansion brought about by cross-border e-commerce lowering trade thresholds, as well as its buffering and supplementary role in traditional channels under external shocks.

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