Cloud economy and its relationship with China's economy : a capital market-based approach

Through the lens of the stock market, we examine whether and how the cloud economy affects China's economy. We review the literature on cloud computing and related concepts and propose a definition of the cloud economy. Based on this new definition, we create a China Cloud Economy Index (CCEI) and its sub-indices. Using stock market data from 2012 to 2020, we analyze the basic characteristics of these indices, their validity, and their relationship with the overall stock market. The robustness of the new index is also examined. We find that the relationship between the CCEI and the stock market had been getting stronger but weakened somewhat after January 11, 2019 plausibly because of the availability of recent cloud-related policies that have widened the gap between the market performance of CCEI and that of the stock market.