"The 14th Five-Year Plan period requires China to develop a digital economy and vigorously promote the digital transformation of industries. Therefore, the development process of combining digital economy and regional industrial chain has attracted much attention. Taking 26 central city clusters in the Yangtze River Delta (YRD) region from 2011 to 2020 as the research object, on the one hand, the global spatial correlation and local spatial autocorrelation of industrial chain agglomeration among the YRD region are examined by Moran's I index and scatter plot. On the other hand, the spatial panel Durbin model is used to examine the factors and effects of digital economy on regional industrial chain agglomeration. The results show that the indirect effect of regional industrial chain linkage is greater than the direct effect, indicating that the deepening degree of regional industrial chain linkage in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster is conducive to the development of regional industrial chains in neighboring cities and to the promotion of regional industrial chain integration in the Yangtze River Delta city cluster. The development of digital economy can significantly accelerate the pace of upgrading the industrial chain in the Yangtze River Delta region. Digital economy is a new engine for the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries and economic development and growth.

Hongwei Fan, Ke Tao, Wanhan Zhong, Xueying Hu. Spatial Econometric Analysis of Digital Economy Development to Promote Regional Industrial Chain Optimization and Upgrading—Empirical Study of Yangtze River Delta Central City Cluster Based on SDM. Academic Journal of Business & Management (2023) Vol. 5, Issue 13: 169-177. https://doi.org/10.25236/AJBM.2023.051324.

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