Research On Technical Complexity Of Environmental Regulation, Import Of Intermediate Products And Export Of Manufacturing Enterprises

More than 40 years since the reform and opening up,thanks to the export-oriented strategy,China’s import and export trade has developed rapidly,becoming the secondlargest importer and the first exporter in the world,occupying an increasingly important position in the international market.In the current economic globalization,the essence of international trade is also undergoing profound changes,and new situations and changes have emerged: more and more countries are participating in the global value chain,becoming producers of certain links in the global production network system,and the trade-in intermediate goods brought about by the globalized production network is also occupying an increasingly important position,and the trade volume is constantly rising.China’s import and export has the characteristics of "massive import and massive export,both ends outside",etc.,and the rapid expansion is accompanied by the significant growth of imports of intermediate goods.However,the rapid growth of China’s imports and exports did not effectively improve its position at the low end of the world manufacturing production value chain.Processing trade makes China undertake the task of low value-added processing and assembly,due to the backward technology level and the monopoly of multinational companies on industry and resources,China’s manufacturing enterprises in the division of labor in the global value chain also face the risk of falling into the "locking dilemma at the low end of the value chain".At the same time,China’s early crude production method has come to an increasingly serious resource and environmental situation,the development process has long relied on high energy consumption and high emissions,the degradation of the ecosystem,resource constraints tighten,environmental pollution and other issues on China’s sustainable economic development brings challenges.It can be seen that in this context,clarifying the relationship between environmental management and the intermediate imports and export technological sophistication to promote high-quality development of foreign trade has gradually become a hot spot for research in the relevant fields.Environmental regulation has always been an important element of environmental economics,while export technological sophistication is an important aspect of export competitiveness,but there are still few relevant perspectives or cross-disciplinary studies.Do environmental regulations and imports of intermediate goods have a significant impact on the export technological sophistication of Chinese manufacturing enterprises? Is there an interaction between environmental regulations and intermediate goods? And what is the mechanism behind the impact? To answer the above questions,this paper tries to examine the impact of environmental regulations and imports of intermediate goods on the export technological sophistication of China’s manufacturing enterprises from two important perspectives,which will have certain theoretical and practical significance for China to promote the transformation of foreign trade and enhance export competitiveness at present.The research of this paper is new,mainly in the following two aspects: First,the perspective is innovative.When scholars examine the relationship between environmental regulations and exports,they still focus on the impact of command-andcontrol regulations on the quantitative aspects of exports,such as export size,export diversity,or export binary margin,while there is still room for further research on the qualitative aspects of environmental regulations on the export technological sophistication.In addition,this paper incorporates environmental regulations and intermediate imports into a unified framework and examines their interaction on the export technological sophistication at the manufacturing enterprise level to make up for the shortcomings of existing studies.Besides,based on the existing theories,this paper provides an in-depth analysis of the impact of environmental regulations and imports of intermediate goods on export technological sophistication,which makes a marginal contribution to the theoretical development of the related fields.Second,the concept of trade value-added is introduced in the measurement of export technological sophistication index,and the technological sophistication of enterprise exports is improved based on the perspective of domestic value-added of enterprise exports.The framework of this research paper is divided into seven chapters as follows:Chapter 1 is the introduction,which provides a detailed introduction to the background of the research.Chapter 2 is a literature review,which systematically reviews the progress and shortcomings of the literature on environmental regulation,intermediate imports,and export technological sophistication,to provide a basis for research innovation.Chapter 3 is devoted to the construction of indicators,data description,and characteristic facts.After the necessary processing of the database imports,the construction of relevant indicators is usefully improved and measured based on previous studies,and the various characteristics of each indicator are described.Chapters 4 to 6 provide theoretical analyses of the effects of environmental regulations,intermediate imports,and the interaction of the two on the manufacturing enterprises’ export technological sophistication,respectively,and carry out empirical tests after putting forward the corresponding hypotheses to be examined.Chapter 7 is the conclusion and insight.Constructive policy recommendations are proposed after sorting out the findings of the previous study.The main findings of this paper are.First,environmental regulations affect manufacturing enterprises in terms of export technology sophistication.The benchmark results show that the impact of command-and-control regulation on export technological sophistication is U-shaped non-monotonic and the impact on export technological sophistication is in the suppression range;the impact of market incentive and voluntary participation regulation on export technological sophistication is inverted U-shaped non-monotonic and the impact on export technological sophistication is in the promotion range.The results of heterogeneity analysis show that,in terms of trade mode heterogeneity,command-and-control regulation has a significant U-shaped non-monotonic effect on the increase of export technological sophistication of mixed trade enterprises and is in the suppression zone;market incentive regulation has an inverted U-shaped nonmonotonic characteristic on the export technological sophistication of processing trade and mixed trade enterprises and is in the promotion zone;voluntary participation regulation has a significant U-shaped non-monotonic effect on the export technological sophistication of general trade,processing trade,and mixed trade enterprises and is in the promotion zone;voluntary participation regulation has a significant U-shaped nonmonotonic characteristic on the export technological sophistication of general trade,processing trade,and mixed trade enterprises.The effects of voluntary participation regulation on the export technological sophistication of general trade,processing trade,and mixed trade enterprises are all characterized by inverted U-shaped nonmonotonicity and are in the promotion interval.In terms of enterprise location heterogeneity,command-and-control regulation has a U-shaped non-monotonic effect on the increase of export technological sophistication of eastern enterprises and is in the suppression zone;market incentive regulation has only a monotonic promotion effect on the increase of export technological sophistication of eastern and centralwestern enterprises;voluntary participation regulation has a significant monotonic promotion effect on the increase of export technological sophistication of eastern enterprises.In terms of enterprise ownership heterogeneity,command-and-control regulation has a non-monotonic U-shaped impact on the export technological sophistication of foreign-funded enterprises and is in the suppression range;market incentive regulation has an inverted U-shaped non-monotonic impact on the export technological sophistication of both domestic and foreign-funded enterprises and is in the promotion range;voluntary participation regulation has an inverted U-shaped nonmonotonic impact on the export technological sophistication of both domestic and foreign-funded enterprises and is in the promotion range.The effect of voluntary participation regulation on the export technological sophistication of both domestic and foreign enterprises has an inverted U-shaped non-monotonic characteristic and is in the promotion interval.In terms of enterprise size heterogeneity,command-and-control regulation and voluntary participation regulation have a U-shaped impact on the export technological sophistication of large enterprises and are in the suppression range;market incentive regulation has an inverted U-shaped impact on the export technological sophistication of medium-sized enterprises and is in the promotion range.On the heterogeneity of government subsidies,command-and-control regulation has a U-shaped effect on the technological sophistication of non-subsidized enterprises’ exports and is in the suppression zone;market-incentive and voluntary participation regulation have an inverted U-shaped effect on the technological sophistication of nonsubsidized enterprises’ exports and are in the promotion zone.The results of mechanism analysis show that command-and-control regulation significantly affects export technological sophistication through intermediary channels such as enterprise basic innovation and enterprise practical innovation;market incentive regulation significantly affects export technological sophistication through intermediary channels such as enterprise basic innovation,enterprise practical innovation,and enterprise design innovation;voluntary participation regulation significantly affects export technological sophistication through intermediary channels such as enterprise basic innovation and enterprise practical innovation,and voluntary participation regulation significantly affects export technological sophistication through intermediary channels such as enterprise basic innovation and enterprise practical innovation.Voluntary participation regulation significantly affects the export technological sophistication through the intermediary channels of basic innovation and practical innovation.Second,the impact of intermediate goods imports on the technological sophistication of manufacturing exports.The results of the benchmark analysis show that the impact of intermediate goods imports on enterprises’ export technological sophistication has a U-shaped nonlinear characteristic and is in the suppression interval of nonlinear impact.The heterogeneity analysis results show that in the enterprise trade mode heterogeneity,except for mixed trade enterprises,the import of intermediate goods on general trade enterprises and processing trade enterprises export technological sophistication have a significant U-shaped nonlinear impact,the impact of intermediate goods imports on general trade enterprises export technological sophistication in the inhibition interval,while the impact on processing trade enterprises’ export technological sophistication in the promotion interval.In terms of enterprise location heterogeneity,the import of intermediate goods by central and western enterprises and eastern enterprises has a U-shaped non-linear impact on export technological sophistication,both in the suppression range.In the heterogeneity of enterprise ownership,the import of intermediate goods has a non-linear U-shaped impact on the export technological sophistication of both domestic and foreign enterprises,and the impact of intermediate goods import on the export technological sophistication of domestic enterprises is in the suppression range,while the impact on the export technological sophistication of foreign enterprises is in the promotion range.In terms of enterprise size and government subsidy heterogeneity,intermediate goods import has a U-shaped effect on different size types and whether the enterprises enjoy government subsidies and are in the suppression zone.The results of the mechanism analysis show that practical innovation is the only intermediary channel through which intermediate imports affect the technological sophistication of exports,while basic innovation and design innovation do not play a mediating role between intermediate imports and enterprises’ technological sophistication of exports.Third,the interaction between environmental regulations and imports of intermediate goods affects the technological sophistication of manufacturing enterprises’ exports.The results of the benchmark analysis show that the interaction between command-and-control,market-incentive,and voluntary participation regulations and intermediate imports has a nonlinear U-shaped effect on the export technological sophistication of manufacturing enterprises,and all of them are in the inhibition interval.The results of heterogeneity analysis show that,in terms of enterprise trade mode heterogeneity,the interaction of general trade and processing trade mode enterprises have U-shaped nonlinear characteristics on export technological sophistication and are in the inhibition interval;the sample of mixed trade enterprises does not have U-shaped nonlinear relationship and has a linear inhibition effect.In terms of enterprise location heterogeneity,the effects of the interactions between the central and western enterprises and the eastern enterprises on the export technological sophistication all have U-shaped nonlinear characteristics and are in the inhibition interval.In the heterogeneity of enterprise ownership,the interaction between domestic and foreign enterprises has a U-shaped nonlinear characteristic on the export technological sophistication and is in the inhibition interval.In terms of enterprise size heterogeneity,the interaction of different size-types of enterprises has a U-shaped effect on export technological sophistication and is in the suppression interval.In terms of enterprise government subsidy heterogeneity,the interaction of whether enterprises enjoy government subsidies or not has a U-shaped effect and is in the inhibition interval.The results of mechanism analysis show that the interaction between command-andcontrol regulation and intermediate goods imports significantly affects export technological sophistication through the intermediary channels of enterprise basic innovation and enterprise practical innovation;the interaction between market incentive regulation and intermediate goods import significantly affects export technological sophistication through the intermediary channels of enterprise basic innovation,enterprise practical innovation,and enterprise design innovation;the interaction between voluntary participation regulation and The interaction between voluntary participation regulation and import of intermediate goods significantly affects the sophistication of export technology through the intermediary channels of basic innovation and practical innovation of enterprises.