The Impact Of Trade Facilitation On China's Value-added Export

Over the past few years,the revolution of trade facilitation,which aims for reinforcing the constructions of infrastructure,improving the administrative efficiency of government and building up a sound institutional environment,has attracted the attention of many countries.In the meantime,international trade is transferring from inter-industry trade to intra-product trade and international specialization is increasingly fragmented.Process slicing and task segmentation have become prominent features of the global value chain.Products have undergone multiple cross-border transfers before being processed into final products and consumed,so the total trade accounting contains a large number of purely double-counted components.The WTO and the OECD proposed that the value-added should be used as the caliber of trade statistics under the global value chain.Trade facilitation plays an important role in the global value chain.First of all,when products are transferred along the global value chain,trade cost will be accumulated and enlarged many times.In this case,the role of trade facilitation will become more obvious.Secondly,the important role of trade facilitation measures in value chain trade is also reflected in: reducing logistics and customs clearance delay,reducing the uncertainty of trade,increasing the transparency of transactions.A friendly customs clearance and regulation environment makes the value chain work more smoothly,reducing the company's dependence on inventory and increasing the sensitivity to respond to changes in demand.Improving customs management efficiency and setting up convenient customs clearance procedures can help a country reduce trade costs and obtain more benefits in global value chains.So,how does the level of trade facilitation of trading partners affect China's valueadded exports? It is exactly the question that this paper researches on.In order to answer this question,this paper uses the data of the 2016 edition of the World Input-Output Database,according to the methods of KWW(2014)and WWZ(2013),based on calculating results from RIGVC UIBE,distinguishes the value-added exports and value-added in exports,calculates the value-added exports at the bilateral sector level.This paper also uses the data from Global Competitiveness Report and Transparency International,adopts the Principal Component Analysis to establish an indicator accounting system for trade facilitation.Based on these,using the extended Gravity Model,this paper empirically analyzes the influence of trade facilitation levels of 39 countries on the value-added exports in Chinese 46 sectors from 2008 to 2014.These countries are main trade partners of China.The empirical tests show that when the export destination countries increase the level of trade facilitation,China's total valueadded exports and value-added export ratios(the ratio of value-added exports to total exports)will increase.After considering the endogeneity problem,we can also arrive at the same result.Among different industries,the comprehensive level of trade facilitation has a greater impact on the value-added exports of manufacturing sector and service sector.Among different indicators of trade facilitation,the institutional environment and finance & e-commerce development have a greater impact on China's value-added exports.The value-added exports can be further subdivided,and the valueadded exports embedded in the export of intermediate goods are more sensitive to the level of trade facilitation.In the robustness test,the alternative measurement method of trade facilitation is used and the scope of the sample is narrowed.And the corresponding empirical results are consistent with the expectation and the benchmark results,which indicates that the research in this paper is robust.Finally,this paper also uses the mediation effect model to test the impact mechanism of trade facilitation on valueadded exports.This paper finds that trade facilitation increases value-added exports by reducing trade costs.