IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ris/adbiwp/0827.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

E-commerce Development and Entrepreneurship in the People’s Republic of China

Author

Listed:
  • Huang, Bihong

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Shaban, Mohamed

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Song, Quanyun

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

  • Wu, Yu

    (Asian Development Bank Institute)

Abstract

We utilize an e-commerce development indicator in tandem with big data to measure the variations of e-commerce development across counties in the People’s Republic of China and assess its impact on entrepreneurship in both rural and urban areas. We find that households living in counties with higher levels of e-commerce development are more likely to run their own businesses. Further study indicates that e-commerce development not only significantly increases the entry of new startups but also decreases the exit of incumbent businesses. We also find that e-commerce development induces sectoral change of household entrepreneurship. It promotes entrepreneurship in the manufacturing and wholesale sectors, but reduces the entrepreneurship in the retail, hotel, and catering sectors. We also show that e-commerce prosperity fuels entrepreneurship by alleviating the financial constraints and moderates the reliance of household entrepreneurship on social networks.

Suggested Citation

  • Huang, Bihong & Shaban, Mohamed & Song, Quanyun & Wu, Yu, 2018. "E-commerce Development and Entrepreneurship in the People’s Republic of China," ADBI Working Papers 827, Asian Development Bank Institute.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0827
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/411161/adbi-wp827.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Maris Goldmanis & Ali Hortaçsu & Chad Syverson & Önsel Emre, 2010. "E-Commerce and the Market Structure of Retail Industries," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(545), pages 651-682, June.
    2. Choi, James J. & Laibson, David & Metrick, Andrew, 2002. "How does the Internet affect trading? Evidence from investor behavior in 401(k) plans," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(3), pages 397-421, June.
    3. Judith Chevalier & Austan Goolsbee, 2003. "Measuring Prices and Price Competition Online: Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 1(2), pages 203-222, June.
    4. Evans, David S & Jovanovic, Boyan, 1989. "An Estimated Model of Entrepreneurial Choice under Liquidity Constraints," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(4), pages 808-827, August.
    5. Arent Greve & Janet W. Salaff, 2003. "Social Networks and Entrepreneurship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 28(1), pages 1-22, January.
    6. Robert W. Fairlie & Harry A. Krashinsky, 2012. "Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, And Entrepreneurship Revisited," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 58(2), pages 279-306, June.
    7. Andrews,Donald W. K. & Stock,James H. (ed.), 2005. "Identification and Inference for Econometric Models," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521844413, June.
    8. Cohen, Boyd & Winn, Monika I., 2007. "Market imperfections, opportunity and sustainable entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 29-49, January.
    9. Zahra, Shaker A., 1995. "Corporate entrepreneurship and financial performance: The case of management leveraged buyouts," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 10(3), pages 225-247, May.
    10. Erik Hurst & Annamaria Lusardi, 2004. "Liquidity Constraints, Household Wealth, and Entrepreneurship," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 112(2), pages 319-347, April.
    11. Steffen Lohmann, 2015. "Information technologies and subjective well-being: does the Internet raise material aspirations?," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 67(3), pages 740-759.
    12. Austan Goolsbee, 2001. "Competition in the Computer Industry: Online Versus Retail," NBER Chapters, in: E-commerce, pages 487-499, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    13. Casson, Mark, 2005. "Entrepreneurship and the theory of the firm," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 327-348, October.
    14. Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2009. "Search, Obfuscation, and Price Elasticities on the Internet," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 427-452, March.
    15. Jeffrey R. Brown & Austan Goolsbee, 2002. "Does the Internet Make Markets More Competitive? Evidence from the Life Insurance Industry," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 481-507, June.
    16. Fan, Jingting & Tang, Lixin & Zhu, Weiming & Zou, Ben, 2018. "The Alibaba effect: Spatial consumption inequality and the welfare gains from e-commerce," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 203-220.
    17. Austan Goolsbee, 2001. "Competition in the Computer Industry," NBER Working Papers 8351, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Chai, Shijun & Chen, Yang & Huang, Bihong & Ye, Dezhu, 2016. "Social networks and informal financial inclusion," RIEI Working Papers 2016-04, Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, Research Institute for Economic Integration.
    19. Jaeki Song & Fatemeh Mariam Zahedi, 2005. "A Theoretical Approach to Web Design in E-Commerce: A Belief Reinforcement Model," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(8), pages 1219-1235, August.
    20. Nerine Mary George & Vinit Parida & Tom Lahti & Joakim Wincent, 2016. "A systematic literature review of entrepreneurial opportunity recognition: insights on influencing factors," International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 309-350, June.
    21. repec:bla:jindec:v:49:y:2001:i:4:p:487-99 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Santitarn Sathirathai & Voraprapa Nakavachara, 2019. "Connecting Locals to Locals: Market Discovery through E-Commerce," PIER Discussion Papers 118, Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wen-Chung Guo & Fu-Chuan Lai, 2017. "Prices, Locations and Welfare When an Online Retailer Competes with Heterogeneous Brick-and-Mortar Retailers," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 65(2), pages 439-468, June.
    2. Ratchford, Brian T., 2009. "Online Pricing: Review and Directions for Research," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 82-90.
    3. Glenn Ellison & Sara Fisher Ellison, 2006. "Internet Retail Demand: Taxes, Geography, and Online-Offline Competition," NBER Working Papers 12242, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Andrea Pozzi, 2012. "Shopping Cost and Brand Exploration in Online Grocery," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 4(3), pages 96-120, August.
    5. Grewal, Dhruv & Janakiraman, Ramkumar & Kalyanam, Kirthi & Kannan, P.K. & Ratchford, Brian & Song, Reo & Tolerico, Stephen, 2010. "Strategic Online and Offline Retail Pricing: A Review and Research Agenda," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 24(2), pages 138-154.
    6. Kopalle, Praveen & Biswas, Dipayan & Chintagunta, Pradeep K. & Fan, Jia & Pauwels, Koen & Ratchford, Brian T. & Sills, James A., 2009. "Retailer Pricing and Competitive Effects," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 85(1), pages 56-70.
    7. Chun, Hyunbae & Joo, Hailey Hayeon & Kang, Jisoo & Lee, Yoonsoo, 2020. "Diffusion of E-Commerce and Retail Job Apocalypse: Evidence from Credit Card Data on Online Spending," CEI Working Paper Series 2020-7, Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    8. Cai, Dongliang & Song, Quanyun & Ma, Shuang & Dong, Yang & Xu, Qiuhua, 2018. "The relationship between credit constraints and household entrepreneurship in China," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 246-258.
    9. Paul A. Coomes & Jose Fernandez & Stephan F. Gohmann, 2013. "The Rate of Proprietorship Among Metropolitan Areas: The Impact of the Local Economic Environment and Capital Resources," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 37(4), pages 745-770, July.
    10. Philippe Bracke & Christian Hilber & Olmo Silva, 2014. "Homeownership and Entrepreneurship: The Role of Mortgage Debt and Commitment," CESifo Working Paper Series 5048, CESifo.
    11. Elitcha Koffi & Fonseca Raquel, 2018. "Self–Employment, Wealth and Start–up Costs: Evidence from a Financial Crisis," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(3), pages 1-28, July.
    12. Li, Lixing & Wu, Xiaoyu, 2014. "Housing price and entrepreneurship in China," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(2), pages 436-449.
    13. Adelino, Manuel & Schoar, Antoinette & Severino, Felipe, 2015. "House prices, collateral, and self-employment," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 288-306.
    14. Nadia Simoes & Nuno Crespo & Sandrina B. Moreira, 2016. "Individual Determinants Of Self-Employment Entry: What Do We Really Know?," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(4), pages 783-806, September.
    15. Prince, Jeffrey T., 2007. "The beginning of online/retail competition and its origins: An application to personal computers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 139-156, February.
    16. Rafael P. Ribas, 2014. "Liquidity Constraints, Informal Financing, and Entrepreneurship: Direct and Indirect Effects of a Cash Transfer Programme," Working Papers 131, International Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth.
    17. Robert W. Fairlie, 2013. "Entrepreneurship, Economic Conditions, and the Great Recession," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(2), pages 207-231, June.
    18. Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero & Luciana Méndez-Errico, 2017. "Does Inequality Foster or Hinder the Growth of Entrepreneurship in the Long Run?," Research on Economic Inequality, in: Research on Economic Inequality, volume 25, pages 299-341, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    19. Robert W. Fairlie, 2013. "Minority and immigrant entrepreneurs: access to financial capital," Chapters, in: Amelie F. Constant & Klaus F. Zimmermann (ed.), International Handbook on the Economics of Migration, chapter 8, pages 153-175, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Philippe Bracke & Christian Hilber & Olmo Silva, 2012. "Homeownerhip and Entrepreneurship," SERC Discussion Papers 0103, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    e-commerce development; big data; entrepreneurship;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L81 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Retail and Wholesale Trade; e-Commerce

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:adbiwp:0827. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: ADB Institute (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/adbinjp.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.