Abstract

As the digital economy becomes increasingly integrated with international trade, digital services trade has emerged as a new engine of global trade growth. However, measures introduced by various countries, such as data localization requirements and restrictions on cross-border data flows, have made institutional barriers to digital services trade increasingly prominent. This paper uses export technology complexity to measure export competitiveness and systematically examines the impact of digital services trade restrictions on export technology complexity, while also exploring the moderating role of institutional quality, based on cross-country panel data from 49 countries from 2014 to 2023. The findings are threefold: First, digital services trade restrictions have a significant negative impact on export technology complexity, a conclusion supported by robustness tests. Second, institutional quality plays a negative moderating role, meaning that higher institutional quality strengthens the inhibitory effect of restrictive policies. Third, heterogeneity analysis shows that the negative effect of digital services trade restrictions is significant in developed countries and EU countries, but not significant in developing countries and non-EU countries. This paper provides empirical evidence and policy references for balancing openness and security and for optimizing the governance system of digital services trade.