Government-supported e-commerce promotion and entrepreneurship in rural regions

This study investigates the role of government-supported e-commerce promotion in fostering entrepreneurship in rural regions, with a focus on a policy intervention in China. Using a novel administrative dataset, we exploit the staggered rollout of the Rural E-commerce Pilot County policy in a difference-in-differences design and find a 21.8 percentage point increase in newly registered firms and a 21.4 percentage point increase in their initial employment in pilot counties. Notably, this growth is concentrated among small enterprises with four or fewer employees. The policy’s effects were observed across both traditional and knowledge-intensive industries, suggesting that e-commerce services and infrastructure stimulate broad-based economic activity. Our findings further reveal that these benefits are more pronounced in counties with limited fiscal capacity, and the effects are largely independent of traditional capital investments. These results provide critical insights for policymakers aiming to stimulate entrepreneurship through targeted e-commerce promotion, particularly in resource-constrained regions.