| In recent years,the wave of "anti-globalization" marked by Britain's "Brexit" and Trump's election as the United States President has forced the academic community to analyze the issue of individual trade interests in the context of trade liberalization and globalization.In the context of globalization,in addition to trade liberalization,there are also uncertainties in trade policy.Based on the existing literature,this dissertation explores the source,performance and characteristics of uncertainty,and summarizes the development trend of preferential trade agreements and the current status of unequal distribution of trade benefits worldwide.Then,this dissertation builds a dual heterogeneity model on the production side and the demand side,and theoretically analyzes the impact of trade policy uncertainty on individual consumer trade benefits and distribution.Using China's accession to the WTO as a quasi-natural experiment,this dissertation verifies the individual trade benefits and distribution under trade policy uncertainty from an empirical perspective.Finally,this dissertation validates the positive effects of bilateral and multilateral trade agreements on reducing trade policy uncertainty and enhancing individual consumer trade benefits through counterfactual simulations.Based on this research idea,the structure of this dissertation is as follows: the introduction section briefly introduces the research background and significance,research ideas and content,main research methods,and innovations and deficiencies.In addition to the introduction and conclusions,it includes six chapters.The first chapter is the related literature review,which systematically sorts out fout major categories of literature.The first type of literature is defination of trade policy uncertainty.The second category is the measurement method of trade policy uncertainty,which summarizes relevant research at home and abroad according to the evolution process of the research.The third category is the economic impact of trade policy uncertainty.It summarizes relevant theoretical and empirical studies from the macro,meso,and micro levels.The fourth category is related literature on consumer heterogeneity and individual distribution of trade benefits,which summarizes existing literature on the modeling of consumer heterogeneity,and the ways in which trade affects individual distribution and the main empirical findings.The second chapter is characteristic facts.First,starting from the concept of uncertainty,it explores the sources of uncertainty.Second,starting from the current international environment,it exposes the performance of uncertainty,and summarizes the characteristics of uncertainty.Third,it summarizes the development trends of preferential trade agreements,and provides realistic basis for Chapter 3 and Chapter 4 to propose uncertain trade policies.Fourth,it measures the overall changes and industry differences in trade policy uncertainty faced by China under the WTO,the Asia-Pacific Trade Agreement,the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement and the China-Pakistan Free Trade Agreement.Finally,it sorts out the current situation of unequal distribution of trade benefits internationally and within economies in the context of globalization.The third chapter is a theoretical model based on the two countries.First,it models the heterogeneity of the enterprise and the consumer,and analyzes the differences of the product price and profit of the enterprise between the framework of consumer heterogeneity and the representative consumer.Then,this chapter models the uncertainty of trade policy,and reflects the it in the change of production costs of enterprises,and analyzes the impact of trade policy uncertainty on consumer individual trade benefits and distribution in general equilibrium.Finally,based on theoretical model derivation,this chapter proposes trade and industrial policies to eliminate trade policy uncertainty and its effects.The fourth chapter is the theoretical model of the multi-country situation.The two-state situation in Chapter 3 is extended to the multi-country situation.At the same time,it analyzes the impact of competition in exporting countries and importing countries on individual consumers' trade benefits and distribution,and compares the practicality of trade and industrial policies according to the theoretical derivation.The fifth chapter is the empirical research based on China's accession to the WTO.This chapter firstly verifies the impact of trade policy uncertainty and actual tariffs on consumer trade benefits and their distribution effects on the theoretical basis of Chapter 3.Then,the consumer price index is decomposed,horizontally decomposed into domestic and imported product price indexes,and vertically decomposed into category effects and price effects,in order to explore the mechanism of trade policy uncertainty affecting consumer individual trade benefit distribution.Finally,based on the theory of Chapter 4,the impact of trade policy uncertainty and tariff competition between exporting countries and between importing countries on the individual consumer's trade benefits and distribution in the presence of a third country is discussed.The sixth chapter is counterfactual simulation,which explores the trade benefits and distribution of individual Chinese consumers after the uncertainty of bilateral and multilateral trade policies has been completely eliminated.This chapter first explains the counterfactual simulation method in detail,and then simulates the complete elimination of the uncertainty of Sino-US trade policy in bilateral situations and the complete elimination of relative trade policy uncertainty in multilateral situations.The last part contains the main conclusions,policy recommendations and future outlook.The main conclusions of this dissertation are mainly composed of seven aspects:Firstly,the world economy is entering an era of super uncertainty that is unique in history.Uncertainty in the 20 th century was mainly manifested in inflation,the financial crisis,the disintegration of the Soviet Union,the arms race,the danger of nuclear war,and the deteriorating environment.However,the performance of uncertainty in the 21 st century has never been worse.The financial crisis-inducing factors continue to increase,and a new round of financial crisis is imminent.Hegemonism is deeply entrenched and populism is intensifying.Terrorist attacks,wars and local conflicts are frequent,and the oil and food crisis and epidemic crisis are becoming increasingly serious.Global trade and political frictions caused by economic growth pressure and trade protectionism have also escalated.Global uncertainty shows a rising trend,and any shock may lead to a new level of uncertainty.Secondly,there is a bias in the estimation of trade policy uncertainty on trade benefits under the representative consumer framework.By constructing a model of corporate heterogeneity and consumer heterogeneity,this dissertation finds that the price of consumer goods and corporate profits depend not only on the marginal cost of the company,export costs,tariffs,but also on consumer preferences and spending structure.Moreover,the impact of trade policy uncertainty on corporate entry and exit is affected by demand-side preferences and expenditure structure.Under the heterogeneous consumer framework,consumers with different preferences receive different trade benefits from the decline in trade policy uncertainty.Thirdly,consumers with higher substitution elasticity suffer lower trade profit losses.Under the framework of heterogeneous consumers,even under certain conditions,consumers will suffer a loss of trade benefits after tariffs rise,and consumers with higher substitution elasticity will suffer a lower loss of trade benefits.In addition,when impacted by the uncertainty of trade policy,consumers with higher substitution elasticity will also suffer a lower loss of trade benefits.Because when the tariff or trade policy uncertainty faced by a product rises,individual consumers with high elasticity of product substitution can turn to other products,thereby avoiding the impact of tariffs and trade policy uncertainty and reducing the loss of trade benefits;Consumers with low elasticity of substitution suffer more loss of trade profits.Fourthly,preferential trade agreements can reduce and eliminate trade policy uncertainty and its impact.Through theoretical model analysis,this dissertation finds that the smaller the possibility of future tariff changes,the lower the possibility of future tariff increases,the smaller the future tariffs,and the lower the degree of uncertainty in trade policies.The lower the uncertainty of the trade policy,the higher the marginal cost threshold of the enterprise,the more the enterprise enters,and the lower the individual consumer's loss of trade benefits.Preferential trade agreements can reduce and eliminate trade policy uncertainty and its impact in two ways: on the one hand,if certain trade barriers(such as tariffs and non-tariff barriers)are removed and restricted to zero,the risk of renegotiation in the future will be lower,then the uncertainty of future trade policy will be reduced;on the other hand,if countries with more similar preferences can agree on standards,rules,and non-economic policies and integrate the economy to make the cost of a trade war extremely high,the risks and uncertainties that trigger trade protection will decrease in the future.Fifthly,appropriate industrial subsidies can eliminate the effects of trade policy uncertainty.Through theoretical analysis,this dissertation finds that both domestic and foreign companies' subsidies can eliminate the impact of trade policy uncertainty.The subsidy rate is related to the maximum tariff and consumer preference distribution that the industry may suffer in the future.However,compared with trade policy,industrial policy is slightly inferior.On the one hand,the cost of industrial subsidies is high,and it is difficult to implement industrial subsidy policies when the interests of domestic enterprises have not been substantially damaged;on the other hand,although industrial subsidies can make up for the loss of consumer trade benefits,excessive subsidies can cause market chaos,resulting in misplaced resources.Whether from a cost-benefit perspective or a market development perspective,multilateral preferential trade agreements are the best choice.Sixthly,the impact of trade policy uncertainty will automatically disappear due to competition between countries.Differences in tariffs,trade policy uncertainty,consumer preferences,and spending structure between importing countries will produce a competitive effect.When affected by trade policy uncertainty,exporting companies can choose export markets based on their own production efficiency,thereby avoiding trade policy uncertainty influences.The importing country can choose which country to import according to the uncertainty of the trade policy of the exporting country,thereby avoiding the impact of trade policy uncertainty,so there is also a competition effect between the exporting countries.Moreover,this competition effect can automatically eliminate the loss of trade benefits caused by trade policy uncertainty and tariffs to individual consumers,and even bring positive trade benefits to individual consumers.Seventhly,China's accession to the WTO mainly improves consumers' trade interests by reducing trade policy uncertainty,and the effect of actual tariff reduction is not obvious.Because after China's accession to the WTO,it received permanent MFN treatment,ending the threat of high US tariffs and reducing the uncertainty of trade policy between China and the United States.Before China joined the WTO,the actual tariffs between China and the United States have dropped significantly.Therefore,the changes in actual tariffs have not brought a significant increase in trade benefits to Chinese consumers after 2001.Based on the above main conclusions,our main policy recommendations include three parts: Firstly,the open world economy is an important measure to deal with the impact of global uncertainty.The dominant belief of an era guides people and government to take action.Just as "there is a history of economic thought first,followed by a history of economics".Before an uncertain event occurs,there must be some thought or belief that guides it,and this thought or belief is the source of uncertainty.Reducing uncertainty and its impact on the world economy from its root causes is the direction that we can work towards in the future.The open world economy proposed by Xi Jinping is in line with historical and economic laws.It is based on the belief of "building a community of shared future for mankind" and is guided by "openness,tolerance,inclusiveness,balance,and win-win".Moreover,it sets the tone for future trade policies,guarantees the predictability of future trade policies,maintains the basic beliefs of the healthy development of the world economy,and lays a solid material and spiritual foundation for the sustainable and healthy development of human society.This is China's wisdom and China's solution to decrease the impact of global uncertainty and maintain the global trading system.Secondly,the widely covered multilateral trade agreements is an important vehicle for openness.Preferential trade agreements play an important role in reducing and eliminating trade policy uncertainty and its impact,so preferential trade agreements provide a cornerstone for dealing with the impact of trade policy uncertainty.However,not all preferential trade agreements can reduce uncertainty.A multilateral trade agreement is the inevitable result of a game between countries and the most stable and optimal result.Compared with bilateral trade agreements,wider and more inclusive multilateral trade agreements are more important carriers of openness.As a big trading country,China must not only actively promote the reform of the WTO,but also always pay attention to the dynamics of other countries and seize the opportunities to reach a new multilateral agreement.In addition,China must notice that many bilateral agreements have the effect of splitting the WTO dispute settlement mechanism.China can learn from the EU 's position and advocate a broader and more inclusive overall agreement.Thirdly,the open structure of domestic and foreign linkages and mutual aid between east and west is a requirement of the new era.In the wave of reform and opening up,although China has gained trade dividends,it also faces inequality in the distribution of trade benefits,such as inequality in distribution between the east and the west,and inequality between the poor and the rich.Moreover,the empirical research in this dissertation also confirms that for consumers with different expenditure shares of basic consumer goods,the rate of increase in trade benefits obtained from the decline in uncertainty is also different.Therefore,in the new era of open policies,China must improve the market mechanism,cooperation mechanism,mutual assistance mechanism,and support mechanism to achieve domestic and foreign linkage,and mutual reciprocity between the east and the west.Although the theoretical model is constructed and empirically verified in this dissertation,there are still some shortcomings.For example,the theoretical model in this dissertation only analyzes the direct ways in which trade policy uncertainty affects consumers' trade benefits,that is,the import of final products,and does not analyze the indirect channels of intermediate product imports.In addition,limited to the problem of summing up consumption,although the utility function chosen in this dissertation characterizes consumer heterogeneity,it is far from reality.These shortcomings will be the direction of future research. |
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