Theoretical Analysis And Empirical Research On The Impact Of Standardization For China’s Export Trade

With the prevalence of international division of labor,the degree of interdependence between countries is increasing,and international trade is also developing in the process of integration.As a kind of normative guidance document,standards have become the transaction basis in the international market.In recent years,many countries regard the right to draft,participate in and lead international standards as the first choice strategy of international economic competition.China has also realized the strategic significance of standardization and continuously promoted the construction of national standardization system.In this context,many scholars have joined in the study of the relationship between standardization and international trade.Among the existing achievements,it is a common analytical method to use the econometric model to measure the trade effect of regional standardization,while the theoretical analysis of standardization and international trade has not formed a systematic study.Therefore,this paper will try to sort out the mechanism path of the influence of export countries’ Standardization on international trade by combining the form of theoretical elaboration and theoretical model construction.At the same time,it also makes an empirical study on the impact of China’s standardized export trade.Referring to previous scholars’ theoretical research,this paper systematically summarizes the positive or negative effects of standardization on export trade from the theoretical perspectives of network externality,information asymmetry,scale economy and diversity constraints.According to the analysis results,the positive effects of export countries’ standardization are to reduce transaction costs,improve production efficiency,and the negative effects are to reduce product categories.On this basis,this paper constructs an endogenous trade model based on D-S framework.Standards are introduced into the model as endogenous variables that affect iceberg cost,production efficiency and product category.The results of theoretical model study show that standardization influences the development of export trade by promoting the increase of export quantity,the decrease of export price and the decrease of export category.Based on the cross country panel data from 1996 to 2017 in China,the paper combines the gravity model and the fixed effect vector decomposition model to analyze the standardized trade impact,including benchmark regression,sub sample regression,endogeneity test,and replacement of key variables regression.In addition,referring to Shibingzhan(2010)and Hummels(2005)method,we calculate the margin of extensive margin,quantity margin and price margin of China’s export to the "one belt and one road" country,and carry out three marginal decomposition on the standardized trade impact.The empirical results show that:(1)the improvement of China’s standardization has a significant positive effect on the development of export trade,and the model endogenous test after the introduction of instrumental variables confirms the robustness of the results;(2)the positive role of standardization is more obvious when exporting to countries with higher economic development level;(3)there are "two stages" in the impact of national standard stock on export trade.In the phase of scarcity of national standards,the stock of national standards promotes the growth of export trade.However,when the excessive supply of national standards reaches a certain saturation,the increase of stock will inhibit the development of export trade;(4)the standardization of exporting countries will help increase the average export quantity and increase the average export price,but also restrict the diversity of export products.Both theoretical and empirical analysis show that the improvement of export countries’ standardization level generally promotes the development of export trade.Relevant data shows that the stock of national standards and industrial standards has been growing steadily in the past 30 years,but the proportion of newly added national standards referring to international standards is relatively low.At present,China’s standardization system also has the problem of insufficient international standard collection rate.Based on all the above analysis results,this paper provides practical policy recommendations for the formulation and implementation of China’s standardization strategy from the perspective of international trade.The suggestions are as follows: first,carry out "standards" theme training for export enterprises to create a "standardization system" construction atmosphere;second,deepen the mutual recognition of standards between China and other countries,build a "standardization" exchange platform,and improve the internationalization level of China’s standards;third,actively participate in international standards development through in-depth involvement in international standards organizations.