The Influence Of International Investment Agreements On Value Chains Trade

Since the 1990s,economic globalization has become a remarkable feature of global economy.New changes have taken place in the international labor division system due to the deepening of economic globalization,continuous development of information technology and the decline of logistics costs.The model of international specialization has experienced the transition from inter-industry and intra-industry division to intra-product division,and transnational investment develops continuously,multinational companies have distributed production links to different countries,and production,sales and processing of products are no longer limited to one country.The final product may gather goods and services created by multiple countries in the international production network.Internationalization of production promoted the international flow and combination of production factors,deepened the vertical integration division of labor,and finally formed the global production network of multinational companies based on value chain.International investment agreements(IIA)concluded among countries will affect the investment decisions of transnational corporations and change the flow of transnational investment,and then will have impact on the global production networks.Therefore,international investment agreements are increasingly inseparable from value chain trade.In this context,it is of great value to explore the impact of international investment agreements on value chains trade.The focus of this paper is to explore the impact of international investment agreements on value chain trade by combining normative analysis with empirical analysis.It can be divided into five parts.The first part is the introduction,which discusses the research background and significance of this article,explains the research value of this article,summarizes the relevant literature of international investment agreements and value chain trade,and finally points out the innovation and deficiency of this article.The second part is the theoretical basis of this paper,it consists of three parts:the comparative advantage theory,global value chain theory and the theory of regional economic integration.Based on these theories,this paper introduces the mechanism and influence channel of international investment agreement on value-added trade.The third part is the development status of international investment agreements and value chain trade,which includes the development status of international investment agreement,the development status of value chain trade and the evolution of the dynamic relationship between the two.The fourth part is the empirical analysis.Firstly,the theoretical model is constructed,the model variables are selected and the data are processed simply,and then gravity model is estimated by panel data,and the analysis of international investment agreements to value chains trade and robustness test is made in this chapter.In the further analysis,the differentiated impact of international investment agreements on the countries'embedding in global value chains is discussed.The fifth part is the research conclusion and relevant policy recommendations,which makes a conclusive summary of the impact of international investment agreements on value chain trade,and puts forward practical policy recommendations based on China's economy.The empirical results shows that bilateral investment treaties(BIT)and RTA(Invest)have different effects on value chain trade between parties,BIT is ineffective in promoting value chains trade,while investment clauses in RTA have significant promoting effect and differential influences on bilateral value added trade.Specifically,investment provisions in RTA have a positive promoting effect on both the forward and backward participation in GVCs,but a stronger promoting effect on the forward participation.The investment clauses in RTA significantly promote the value chains trade between north-south and south-south RTA parties,while inhibits north-north RTA parties' value chains trade.In order to obtain value chain trade benefits,Countries should actively participate in the formulation and implementation of high-level investment rules,formulate economic and trade policies oriented to upgrade the value chain,actively conclude deep investment agreements with economies which have strong value-added trade linkages,and continuously increase countries' participation depth and division position in value chains.The innovations of this paper are reflected as follows:firstly,the research perspective is unique.This paper examined the benefits of international investment agreements by exploring the impact of them on value chains trade,which goes beyond the previous studies on the impact of international investment agreements on investment and trade agreements on value chain trade.Secondly,this paper analyzes the policy effects of different investment agreements.By distinguishing the impacts of different kinds of investment agreements,this paper expounds the important role of contemporary international investment agreements,and reveals the significant role of the inclusion of investment rules in regional trade agreements.Thirdly,Comparative analysis of international investment agreement on different value-added trade is made.Through its different influence on forward and backward participation,this paper explores the impact of international investment agreements on a country's value chain status.It provides some reference suggestions on whether a country should consider the participation in value chains trade or the promotion of its status when participating in the formulation of international investment policies,which has certain practical significance.Finally,for research methods,this paper uses panel data to estimate the gravity model in order to increase information capacity and improve estimation accuracy,and also adds exporter-time,importer-time and exporter-importer fixed effects into the model,so as to reduce endogenous problems caused by missing variables.