Regional Trade Policy Uncertainty And Behavior Choice Of Chinese Export Enterprises

In recent years,with the "black swan" events such as "brexit" and "trade friction between China and the United States",the global trade policy uncertainty has risen sharply.However,the global multilateral trade coordination mechanism,represented by WTO,failed to play a role in reducing trade barriers and trade policy uncertainty.On the contrary,it suffered heavy losses and fell into stagnation,and the global trade frictions became increasingly fierce.However,the regional coordination mechanism represented by the free trade area(FTA)has made rapid progress and significantly reduced the trade policy uncertainty in the regional scope.Therefore,the Chinese government also pays more and more attention to the construction of FTA.Among them,China-ASEAN Free Trade Area(CAFTA)is by far the largest FTA in China's foreign participation in construction.On November 4,2002,both sides passed the framework agreement on China-ASEAN Comprehensive Economic Cooperation(hereinafter referred to as the framework agreement)and began to implement it on July 1,2003,announcing that CAFTA was officially established,and finally completed on January 1,2010.In this context,it is necessary to study systematically the behavior choice of Chinese export enterprises caused by the regional trade policy uncertainty,so as to comprehensively test the effect of China's implementation of FTA strategy.At the same time,the current research on the trade policy uncertainty on the behavior choice of Chinese export enterprises entering foreign markets started relatively late,and the impact of regional trade policy uncertainty on the behavior choice of Chinese export enterprises and its mechanism are not seen.Therefore,this paper first studies the impact of regional trade uncertainty on the choice of product size of export enterprises and its mechanism.Based on the Heterogeneous Enterprise Trade Model,this paper theoretically analyzes the impact of regional trade policy uncertainty on the choice of product scale of export enterprises by introducing the uncertainty variable of regional trade policy,taking CAFTA as an example,this paper uses the micro-enterprise-level data matched by China IndustryDatabase,China Customs Enterprise database and WTO tariff database from 2001 to2007,and uses the difference-in-differences method(DID)to test the theoretical analysis results comprehensively,the conclusions are as follows: The reduction of the regional trade policy uncertainty significantly promotes the expansion of the product scale of Chinese Export Enterprises;The regional trade policy uncertainty has a significant impact on the expansion of the scale of Chinese export enterprises due to the types of ownership,regions and factor intensities.Then,this paper empirically examines the impact of the reduction of regional trade policy uncertainty on the diversification of China's export enterprises.The results show that the formal implementation of the framework agreement has promoted the behavior choice of Chinese export enterprises to export ASEAN product variety.The study further finds that the behavior choice of export enterprises with different ownership types,regions and factor intensities shows significant heterogeneity.Finally,through the mechanism test,it is found that the regional trade policy uncertainty decreases mainly through the learning effect to promote the diversification of export product choice of Chinese export enterprises.Then,based on the Heterogeneous Enterprise Trade Model,this paper demonstrates the impact of trade policy uncertainty on export firms' product quality behavior choice under the framework of regional free trade agreement.The conclusions are as follows: The decrease of regional trade policy uncertainty can promote the improvement of product quality of Chinese Export Enterprises;At the same time,the results also show significant heterogeneity due to the types of ownership,regions,factor intensity and the entry and exit of enterprises.Finally,this paper empirically examines the impact of the reduction of regional trade policy uncertainty on the choice of Chinese export enterprises' FDI behavior.The results show that the formal implementation of the Framework Agreement promotes the direct investment choice of Chinese export-oriented ASEAN enterprises in the region.The study further finds that the behavior choice of enterprises exporting to ASEAN under different ownership types,regions and factor intensities shows significant heterogeneity.Finally,through the mechanism test found that,the uncertainty of regional trade policy is reduced mainly through learning effect,competition effect and improving the intermediate trade environment to promote the direct investment behavior choice of Chinese export ASEAN enterprises.The policy implications of the above conclusions are as follows: first,we should pay special attention to the role of regional free trade agreements in reducing the regional trade policies uncertainty;second,we should increase the creation of high-quality and high-standard FTA;we should increase the support to private enterprises;third,we should effectively guarantee the stability and sustainability of the trade policies of the existing regional free trade areas;finally,in the region,we should In the process of building a trade zone,we should work with Member States tostrengthen the protection of intellectual property rights.