The Comparative Study On The Influence Of Trade Structure’s Evolution To Total Factor Productivity Between China And Japan

The relationship between trade and economic growth has always been the focus of study in academic, and the key to a country’s economic growth is the level of its’ total factor productivity. Evolution of trade structure is the main source to speed up the process of internationalization and promote sustained economic growth.Therefore, the research on the relationship between trade structure and the total factor productivity has more practical significance.As the major trading nations in the world, China and Japan have made an important contribution to the promotion and development of the World Trade. China, as a representative of the integrated development model, plays a good demonstration effect on other developing countries. Japan, as one of the world’s major developed economies, is worthy us to think and emulate it’s high-tech-oriented mode of economic development. Therefore, the research on the evolution of China and Japan’s trade structure and their total factor productivity is a good reference.In measuring of trade structure, the previous literature mainly concentrated in the trad-ables technical structure, regional structure and industrial structure; in analysis of the technical structure of the trade goods, primary products and manufactured goods were only divided into low-skilled and high-tech goods. In measuring of trade structure, the share of trade to total trade of manufactured goods were made as indicators to analyze. Obviously, with the technological advancing, such a sweeping classification seems unscientific. With the passage of time, some products, which may seem as high technical content, have already been in a sunset industry and been transferred to the labor-intensive industry, it is no longer reasonable if such products continue to be classified as high-tech products. Therefore, it is necessary to use new judgment to define technology content of trade goods, then to analyze the trade structure, thus the conclusions will be more scientific and practical significance.This paper starts from the perspective of the technical structure of the trade goods. Firstly, based on the principle of added value, it builds the analysis indicators of technical structure and the path analysis of the trade structure. As the basis for, it researches and compares the dynamic evolution of trade structure between China and Japan. It shows that the trade structure of China and Japan have some degree of dynamic optimization of evolution, but the evolution stage and the evolution speed are different. Secondly, This article makes a more comprehensive induction and conclusion about the mechanism by which the evolution of trade structure affect a country’s total factor productivity from the perspective of both imports and exports. Thirdly it use the DEA to estimate the total factor productivity in China and Japan separately, it concludes that China’s overall growth rate of total factor productivity in general is higher than Japan, and China’s total factor productivity has been in a stable growth, while Japan grows more volatile. Fourthly, this paper, from the long-term and short-term point of view respectively, makes a empirical test about the effect which China and Japan’s evolution of trade structure promote the growth rate of total factor productivity.by using measurement methods with national index data, The results show that trade structure does play a long-term stable role in promoting the evolution of total factor productivity growth, the lower evolution stages of the trade structure plays a stronger role in promoting the country’s total factor productivity growth. Meanwhile, in the total level, imports promote the total factor productivity growth, while exports play a reverse role; In component level, export have a role in promoting high-tech products, while imports have completely different effects on the total factor productivity growth in China and Japan:both middle-and higher-technology products imported have a positive effect on the total factor productivity growth in China, while it reduces the growth of total factor productivity in Japan, but Japanese imports of low-tech products have a role in promoting. Finally, according to the conclusion, the paper ends with suggestion to optimize the trade structure and promote China’s total factor productivity growth.