Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) has become an important factor hindering the development of the contemporary international trade, and brought extensive, sustained and frequent effects on exporting countries especially export enterprises in developing countries. Therefore, research on the theory and practice of implementation and effects of TBT is inevitable academic mission of international trade and worthy of long-term research and exploration.Over the years, the research on TBT is mainly confined to the trade effect, but studies on the technical effects of TBT that may stimulate the export enterprise’s technological progress are relatively less and less systematic. But with the development of international trade and the widespread application of TBT, in-depth study and correct understanding of the technical effect of TBT, actively use the technical effects of TBT has become an important field of international trade, also be an important way to effectively cope with foreign TBT and to promote the transformation and upgrading of export enterprises.In this paper, we made a thorough analysis on the existence, the generation mechanism, forms and implementation conditions of TBT technology effect, based on the theoretical analysis, numerical simulation and the method of empirical research.In the part of theoretical analysis, this paper respectively assumed the closed economy, open economy and open economy under the restriction of TBT three environment, through the export enterprise angular point decision, we derived the threshold of mandatory technical innovation under the request of exogenous technology. In the open economy under the constraint of TBT, we derived the dual threshold of technological innovation based on final products and intermediate goods production decisions. Through comparison of the exogenous technical requirements of TBT and dual threshold of technical innovation comparison, it is show that bifurcation equilibrium of enterprises’ technological innovation and export selected are determined by the initial enterprise technology level, elasticity of labor output, the proportion of imports of intermediate products and other factors.And then from the theoretical level, explained the existence of TBT technical effects and the operating mechanism characterized by enterprise technology innovation and exports bifurcation equilibrium on the angular point decision, and the TBT effects form with mandatory technical innovation, and the restriction factors of technical effects such as the initial level of technology, labor output elasticity, the proportion of imports of intermediate goods.To more fully explore the correctness of theoretical analysis and numerical rules, we gave a simulated analysis of the above theoretical analysis conclusion by means of numerical simulation. Dynamic visual display the relationship and variation trend between TBT technical effects and the initial level of technology, labor output elasticity, the proportion of imported intermediate goods and other variables, vividly reproduces the image of bifurcation of equilibrium state of export enterprises technological innovation and export selected. The method of numerical simulation effectively simulate the relationship between the ideal state variables by setting the simulation environment and the interval of parameter values, make up the defect of the empirical study because of the unavailable and unrepeatable empirical data.Finally, this article has carried on the empirical research on the China electromechanical and agricultural product export enterprises which encountered the EU RoHS directive and Japan PLS act as examples, to test whether TBT showed significant technical innovation effects in these two types enterprises. First, as for the variable determination and model selection, we choose an export enterprise TFP as the proxy variable of technological innovation of the export enterprises, and adopting semi parametric method to effectively measure TFP, and choose the TBT formulation and the formal implementation time as the two kinds of dummy variables to describe the TBT feature and respectively define the initial technology level, the proportion of imported intermediate inputs and enterprise properties such as control variable.Then using the panel random effects model to measure the technological innovation effect of the up two kinds of export enterprises under the constrain of RoHS Directive and PLS system.the results show that there exist significant TBT technical effects.All the research mainly draws some conclusions as follows.(1) In view of the natural linkages between trade and technology, The technical effect of TBT is objective existence.(2) Technical effect of TBT is achieved by export enterprises mandatory implementation of technological innovation under the TBT technical requirements constraints.(3) Export enterprises mandatory technical innovation can be achieved through independent innovation, export learning and import of intermediate learning.(4) In view of the enterprise heterogeneity, especially its difference of initial technical level and the labor output elasticity, the mandatory technical innovation of export enterprises exist bifurcation phenomenon, and the equilibrium distribution of export enterprise technology presents cliff features, technical level appears polarization.(5) Under the RoHS directive and PLS system constraints, Chinese export enterprises showed significant technical effect of TBT.(6) The empirical results show that the initial level of technology have a significant positive impact on export enterprises technological innovation, while imports of intermediate goods affect export enterprises technological innovation vary with the different TBT technical constraints.This paper involved the study of the technical effects of TBT into the mainstream paradigm of international trade theory, namely, the basic framework of the new-new trade theory. Based on the interpretation existence of TBT technical effects objectively, through the endogenous technology innovation threshold and exogenous TBT technical requirements set, show the difference on technological innovation choices and export options of export enterprises with the heterogeneity of the initial technical level in the face of external technical barriers. Focus on the internal logic of TBT technical effects and the impact of various factors, reveals the achieve path of export enterprises mandatory technical innovation when encounter foreign TBT. The research of this paper find a new path to actively respond to foreign technical barriers and to accelerate the transformation and upgrading for export enterprises. At the same time, further development of the heterogeneity enterprise theory of Melitz (2003), and made an attempt to lead TBT theoretical research into the standardization and the mainstream direction. |