The Study On The Effects Of Trade Liberalization On Export Duration

Since the reform and opening up 40 years ago,China has continuously improved its openness to promote the convenience of international trade,and has gradually grown into the world's second largest economy and the largest trading country.Export-oriented strategy has played an important role in China's past rapid economic growth.However,after decades of "golden period" of foreign trade growth,the implementation of China's catch-up strategy is becoming more and more difficult.How to pursue the "quality" of growth when the "quantity" of China's export growth slows down and encounters obstacles? This paper studies the impact of trade liberalization caused by tariff reduction on the duration of firm-product export from the persistence and stability of export time dimension.It also studies the impact of trade liberalization on export stability,sustainability and export timing from the perspectives of trade policy uncertainty,regional business environment and firm total factor productivity.By presenting the stylized facts of China's trade liberalization,policy uncertainty and export duration,I find that China's tariff structure has undergone tremendous changes.The number of zero-tariff and low-tariff products has increased substantially,and the number of high-tariff products has decreased substantially.This shows that China has lowered the import tariffs of almost all products after its entry into WTO,and the reduction is considerable.The tariff level faced by firms is also declining with the promotion of trade liberalization.About 60% of the export spells exit one year after export,which means that the export duration of most products is very short.With the prolongation of export duration,the exit risk of products decreases gradually.Measuring the sustainability of firms' export,I find that the sustainability of firm-product exports is not optimistic,and most export relations have not been maintained steadily.This paper elaborates the mechanism of trade liberalization affecting export duration from four aspects: the effect of import cost reduction,the effect of policy uncertainty reduction,the effect of market competition and redistribution,and the indirect effect of business environment.I use the propensity score matching and the "dual trade system" of China to design a quasi-natural experiment,then I use survival analysis model to study the impact of China's trade liberalization to the duration of manufacturing firms' export products.I find that the tariff reduction of the input goods increase the duration of export products on the whole and the trade liberalization in China improved the survival conditions of export products.Tariff reduction is not conducive to the survival of homogeneous export products but promot es the duration of differentiated export products.The exit risk of export spells decrease the most if the spells start the years when tariff reduction is the largest.I study the impact of the trade policy uncertainty reduction cause by China' accession to WTO on export stability.The empirical results show that the trade policy uncertainty reduction helps to improve export duration and export stability.When faced trade policy uncertainty,export firms should wait the appropriate enter opportunity to improve the stability of the follow-up export,but the excessive waiting will led to running counter to one's desire.I study the heterogeneity influences of trade policy uncertainty reduction from the reallocation effect of market competition and find that the export stability of core products is improved,but the non-core products accelerate exit.Through the process of survival of the fittest,the firms' export product mix is gradually concentrating on the core products.This reallocation effect is also reflected in the export product quality,price and the degree of differentiation: the higher quality,higher price and differentiated products' export stability is improved;the lower quality,lower price and homogenous products are gradually eliminated.I further examine the interaction effect between regional business environment and trade liberalization from two aspects: legal environment and reputation quality.I find that the reduction of weighted tariffs at the firm level helps to improve the sustainability of firm-product exports,and trade liberalization improves the stability of China's firm-product exports.In the context of trade liberalization,enhancing the legalization level and reputation quality of the region will strengthen the role of tariff reduction in promoting export sustainability.I examine the impact of trade liberalization and regional business environment on export destination structure from the perspective of export destination number and export destination concentration.I find that enhancing the legal environment and reputation quality of the region will enhance the promotion of tariff relief on export destination number and concentration.I study how Chinese manufacturing firms decide the timing of international market entry through export experience.I find that the firms weight export experience to reduce the fixed costs with obtaining potential export earnings,and then decide the timing and order of export.The higher productivity firms need shorter time not only from the establishment to export for the first time but also the subsequent entry into different international markets.Meanwhile,the higher productivity firms enter the international market of larger size earlier in order to obtain high potential export income,low productivity firms choose to enter the international market of relatively small size in order to accumulate experience.Based on the above conclusions,this paper puts forward appropriate policy recommendations from the perspective of the elimination of tariff and non-tariff trade barriers,respecting the leading role of market rules,the establishment of a more transparent and predictable trade policy environment,and the construction of efficient and convenient services for firms' import and export.