The Impact Of Intellectual Property Right Protection On Export Quality Structure

This paper studies the impact of intellectual property right protection on export quality structure in the context of China's accelerating construction of an innovative country,promoting a new pattern of comprehensive openness,and improving the level of open economy.Product and technological innovation are the fundamental driving force for the improvement of export quality structure.The basic way for intellectual property right protection to promote the improvement of export quality structure is to stimulate innovation.And there is not only the direct effect of intellectual property right protection on innovation,but also indirect effects,including effect through spillovers of import and foreign direct investment.Literature review shows that the impact of intellectual property right protection on the export quality structure is uncertain.This paper empirically studies the impact of intellectual propertyright protection on export quality structure,both of volume and variety,on two levels,namely state and China provincial level.At the state level,with insufficientdata quality and availability in both bilateral and Chinese import trade quality data,US import data covering year 2000-2010 from CEPII World Trade Characterization database is used to conduct the empirical analysis.Panel data regression shows that strengthening intellectual property right protection can boost the proportion of the volume and variety of high-quality products,hence improves export quality structure.The conclusion is robust after adding geographical distance factors and other multiple robustness tests.At China provincial level,export volume and variety quality structure indices are calculated using Chinese customs import and export trade data,covering year from 2006 to 2014.Controlling human capital,per capita physical capital,and foreign trade domestic transaction costs,empirical research using panel data model shows that strengthening intellectual propertyright protection boosts the proportion of the variety of high-quality products,but the proportion of the volume of high-quality products is not boosted,itdeclined to some extent,on the contrary.This indicates that upgrading in export quality does not efficiently promote export price,due to low-quality of innovation.Although the strengthening of China's intellectual propertyright protection has promoted the R&D investment and the number of patents,the growth rate of R&D investment is obviously lower than that of patents,which reflects facts of low-quality of patents of Chinese enterprises,and the fact that the growth of patents mainly depends on the growth of utility models and design patents.Improving the level of innovation of Chinese enterprises and promoting the increase in the quantity and quality of invention patents are the key to improving export quality and improving export quality structure.In addition,an exploratory study on the impact of partner countries' intellectual propertyright protection on China's export quality structure is also conducted using panel data model.The main finding is that the improvement of the intellectual property right protection in partner countries has a significant effect on the variety of China export,in each quality grades.But it has a greater impact on the high-and medium-quality products,and can significantly increase the proportion of these two categories.The result shows that the improvement of the level of intellectual propertyright protection in partner countries will contribute to the structural improvement and price upgrading of China's exports.Based on the above empirical conclusions and existing literature,intellectual propertyright protection has the function of increasing the cost of imitation and stimulating innovation,stimulating enterprises' investment in product innovation,process innovation and technological innovation,and also provide better incentives for basic scientific research.It is conducive to long-term technological progress,thereby improves the export quality.Strengthening intellectual property right protection may be an important institutional guarantee for China to improve its innovation capability,improve innovation quality,increase export technology content,and improve export quality structure.In short,to improve the level of innovation of Chinese enterprises and improve the quality structure of exports,we need to start from the following aspects:First,improve the level of effective intellectual propertyright protection in China;secondly,effectively enhance the level of innovation and innovation of Chinese enterprises,and reduce usage of distortionary innovation incentives.In the end,for the choice of trading partners,through bilateral and multilateral trade agreements and investment agreements,the trade closeness with countries with higher intellectual propertyright protection will be strengthened.