Abstract: Based on the panel data related to the development of digital economy in Xinjiang from 2013 to 2021, this article constructs a comprehensive level evaluation index system for the digital economy development in Xinjiang from four dimensions, namely, the level of economic development, digital communication infrastructure, social innovation capacity, and the level of e-enterprise, and measures the weight of each index by entropy method, and then conducts a comprehensive evaluation of the development level of digital economy in Xinjiang from 2013 to 2021. In addition, we use gray correlation analysis method to explore the correlation between each subsystem and the development of the digital economy in Xinjiang and also use the GM(1,1) gray prediction model to predict the overall trend of digital economy development in Xinjiang in the next four years. The results show that the overall level of digital economy development in Xinjiang is characterized by a year-by-year time series, and from the perspective of each criterion layer, the digital communication infrastructure has the largest increase, while the social innovation capacity is insufficient. According to the results of the correlation measurements, the level of economic development has a more significant impact on the development of digital economy, and the social innovation capacity is still a shortcoming in the development of digital economy in Xinjiang, but the development of Xinjiang’s digital economy in the future still has a lot of potential.
Keywords: digital economy; entropy method; gray correlation analysis method; GM(1,1) model

Reprinted from Guangxi Economic Journal, 2024,42(02):60-74.