Research On The Promotion Effect Of China’s Overseas Economic And Trade Cooperation Zones On Enterprises’ OFDI

As an innovation in the mode of Chinese enterprises’ OFDI,overseas economic and trade cooperation zones make full use of both domestic and international markets and resources to provide platform support for enterprises’ OFDI,and help them to dilute overseas investment risks.They are important carriers to promote the construction of "the Belt and Road" and implement the development strategy of "dual circulation".It is of great practical significance to systematically evaluate the effectiveness of the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones.This paper uses time-varying DID,propensity score matching and other empirical research methods to study the impact and mechanism of the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones on the investment links between Chinese enterprises and countries along "the Belt and Road" from multiple perspectives by matching various databases such as f Di Markets,the information dataset of China’s overseas industrial parks,and the open data of the World Bank,and also examines the heterogeneous impact of host country characteristics.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)The construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones in countries along "the Belt and Road" has significantly promoted Chinese enterprises’ OFDI in the host country.This conclusion has passed multiple robustness tests such as parallel trend test,placebo test,propensity score matching,and substitution of core variables.(2)The results of the mechanism analysis indicate that the spillover and demonstration effects of the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones have promoted the improvement of infrastructure and the optimization of the business environment in countries along the line,thereby enhancing the investment growth of Chinese enterprises in countries along the line.(3)Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the construction of overseas cooperation zones has more significantly promoted the investment growth of Chinese enterprises in neighboring countries and countries along the "Maritime Silk Road",and has a greater investment promotion effect on low-income,high-tax countries along the line and key industries.The research conclusions of this article provide empirical evidence and policy implications for the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones to promote Chinese enterprises’ "going global".The possible marginal contributions of this article are as follows:(1)This article expands the theoretical research on OFDI from the micro perspective of enterprises.From the macro perspective of previous literature focusing on investment to the micro perspective of enterprises,this paper uses the data of f Di Markets from 2003 to 2019,combined with the high-quality development of "the Belt and Road",to more accurately identify the investment promotion effect and heterogeneity characteristics of the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones,and avoid the bias problem of the macro perspective reflecting the OFDI of Chinese enterprises.(2)This article takes the construction of overseas economic and trade cooperation zones as the entry point for causal identification,constructs a time-varying DID model,and expands the research thinking of OFDI.Considering that the investment gravity model used in previous research on OFDI has ignored the existence of endogenous problems,this article takes the construction of cooperative zones as a quasi-natural experiment,adopts a time-varying DID method for research,and adopts a propensity score matching method to solve the endogenous problems,in order to improve the credibility of the research results.