A Theoretical And Empirical Study On The Impact Of Technical Standards On International Trade

With the rapid development of economic globalization and arrival of the knowledge economy era,the role and the status of technical standards in the industry development and international trade has become increasingly prominent. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) statistics,80 percent of the international trade are influenced by technical standards.However, due to differences in the level of national technical and other reasons, the international technical standards competition, industry competition, trade competition is increasing, technical standards have become key factors in affecting international trade and an important means of competitive advantage.In the current, trade protection is becoming increasingly popular and technical standards are becoming the means of competition under the background, although China has become the world’s largest country in trading, to achieve a competitive advantage in the field of foreign trade industry, more than 80 percent are the labor-intensive industries, product technology content are low; Approximately 16,000 international standards of the world, China is lack of participation in the formulation of a fraction. How technical standards affect international trade? What is the theoretical basis of the impact? What degree of the impact? Is to promote or hinder? What is the mechanism can become the driving force protection technology trade development rather than resistance? How to develop technical standards in accordance with specific conditional policy, to play its role in promoting trade and inhibit hinder role in promoting the healthy and sustainable development of China’s foreign trade? This is a very practical research field, for the formulation of relevant industry policy, trade policy, it has important theoretical and practical significance to improve the contribution of technical standards in international trade.From the domestic and foreign research literature, the existing research have the following problems:the first is technical standard research,technological innovation, international trade are failed into a unified framework of analysis for system; The second to focus more on developed countries, less in developing countries;the third is more attention to the technical standards of developed countries to developing countries caused by technical barriers to trade, concerned with technical innovation, patent monopoly to implement technical standards for developing countries is less; Fourth is qualitative research more, less quantitative research, quantitative research has been unable to expand the influence of different types of technical standards detailed comparative analysis, Fifth, technical standards have not been rose to the policy level, in fact, technical standards policy which is a national industrial policy is an important part of trade policy as well as competition policy.This article will be based on the results of previous studies, on several important issues on the international trade effects of technical standards,dividing into three levels to carry out research, that is, from the theoretical level to explore the mechanism of the effect of technical standards in international trade, the influence of technical standards in international trade from the empirical level, putting forward our country free trade area of technical standards policy from the policy recommendations of level.In theory, this article based on the perspective of the new trade theory, combined with the technical standards of network externalities and promote the development of scale economy, solving the information asymmetry, reducing transaction costs and other characteristics, from two aspects of the impact mechanism of technical standards on the international trade competitive advantage, trade competitive disadvantage analysis. On the one hand, the analysis of the technical standard and the combination of technological innovation, formed by technical innovation technical standard (technical disclosure, promotion)--innovation and promotion for the development of technology chain form, and technical standards and product quality are combined with the formation of the to technical standards-production--New technology industrialization development standard form of industrial development chain of trade competitive advantage effect mechanism; on the other hand, the analysis of technology standard and technology innovation patent combination, the formation of technical barriers to trade and to the achievements of technology patents-patent standardization, standard industrialization--the industry monopoly form of technical trade monopoly on trade competitive disadvantage influence mechanism, on the basis of constructing the theoretical model of international trade effects of technical standard, because of the existence of the technology gap and other reasons, there are differences in the trade effects of technical standards for developed countries and developing countries, from the theory that has direct or indirect influence on the formation of technical standards on the international trade competitive advantage and competitive disadvantage.In the empirical aspect, this article mainly aims at the theory part putting forward technical standards on international trade influence the presence of several core hypothesis difference empirical test. Selecting the 1998-2013 year time period, regression model, respectively, from the international standards on international trade scale, regional structure, based on commodity structure, and developing countries represented by China’s national standards, developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Germany national standards conducted empirical tests for each bilateral trade effects, the difference in comparison of effects of different types of trade standard. Among them,The fourth chapter empirical analysis of differences between different types of standard influence on the scale of international trade; the difference of the fifth chapter empirically analyses the influence of different types of standards in international trade area structure; The sixth chapter is the analysis of the different types of empirical standard of different commodities in international trade, such as differences in effect of primary agricultural products, industrial products. The main conclusion of the empirical research are:first, from the scale of trade, international standard stock has a positive effect on the international trade of imports,China’s import and export trade, on the impact of Chinese imports is greater than the effect on exports; Chinese national standards, in the long run, a long-term positive relationship between technical standards and technology innovation and foreign trade, namely the standard, the increase in the number of patents to promote the development of foreign trade, in the short term, there is a negative correlation between the technical standard and foreign trade. Two from the regional structure, has a significant positive effect on American standard international trade,import and export value of Japan, Germany; effect on American, Japan imports is greater than the impact on exports, impact on German export is greater than the effect on imports. National standards, in the long run, the standard stock of technological innovation and foreign trade levels positively correlated, an increase in the number of standards to promote the development of foreign trade. Chinese technical standards for each 1% increase in Sino-US foreign trade volume increased 4.114185%, the trade volume between China and Japan would increase 4.184509%; China every 1% increase in the number of patents, The Sino-US foreign trade volume increased 0.913544%, the date of increased trade between 4.184509%.In the short term effects, technical standards stock, the number of patents plays a negative role in foreign trade, technical standards for each 1% increase in the stock relative to the Sino-US foreign trade is 1.993008% relative reduction, foreign trade between China and Japan on the relative reduction 0.996457%; relative increase in the stock of patents per 1%, foreign trade between China and the US will 0.058131% relative reduction in trade between China and Japan on the relative reduction of 0.484509%. Third, from the commodity structure, the international standard trade impact on mechanical and electrical products and other traditional manufacturing industries than for primary agricultural product significantly influence the impact of information technology products was significantly inferior to traditional manufacturing. International standards for the import of different commodities, exports have a significant positive impact on standards for each one percentage point increase can stimulate exports 12 percent growth. For different commodities, agricultural trade is larger than the spontaneous industrial and export of industrial products generating more dependent on the standard, in the absence of standards, industrial trade will be more restricted. Chinese national standards for industrial products import and export have a significant positive impact, but the import of agricultural products, export trade impacts are not significant; China comparing with developed countries, whether it is an technical standards, or the foreign trade role in promoting development, there is still room to expand vigorously.In the policy recommendations of level, this article based on the previous theoretical and empirical analysis conclusions, as well as the world trade organization, experience and enlightenment of developed countries America, Germany, EU, North America, Japan and ASEAN and the world’s three largest free trade zone standards policies, combined with the practical construction situation and China free trade area China technical standards policy, put forward China free trade area policy suggestions on technical standard. Mainly:on the one hand, to improve the level of technological innovation, strengthen technological innovation and technical standards closely combined, improving the technical level of national standards, improving the national standard of technical level, and actively promote the internationalization of the technical standards, promoting trade competitive advantage;on the other hand to strengthen the technical standards of the developed countries monopoly and other acts of regulation, strengthen research and develop competition policy. The third aspect is to strengthen the technical standard security system, through the rule of law, institutions, mechanisms, policies, planning, strategy and play technology Standard role in promoting China’s foreign trade development.The main innovation of this article is in innovative research topic and research angle. In this article based on the perspective of new trade theory, studying the influence of technical standards in international trade, which provides a new idea and framework of research on trade effect of standard. At the same time, the systematic study of the international and national levels of different types of standard differences on trade effects, standard policy, to play the role of different types of standards have a positive effect. In addition, China is currently building a free trade zone in full swing, but the domestic research on the Free Trade Area is lack of the research on technical standards, which the world’s second largest free trade zones, the European Union, North America will place on the importance of technical standards position in its legal framework agreement has a special chapter on technical standards. In view of this, this article China Free Trade Area, putting forward a special technical standards policy recommendations in this area conducted a creative research.The second main innovation of this article is reflected in the innovation of theory analysis and empirical analysis. Impact of the existing literature on the technical standards for international trade, mostly hypothesis, few explore the mechanism from a theoretical perspective. In this article, the framework of "technical innovation" into the technical standards on international trade influence, from the technical standards, chain of industry,chain development chain to promote the competitive advantage of trade, technical barriers to trade, technical trade monopoly to promote the two trade competitive disadvantage of in-depth analysis of the mechanism of the effect of technical standard on international trade, The theoretical model of international trade effects of technical standard construction from the perspective of the new trade theory, enriching the theory research of technology standards and international trade. In the empirical study, this article collects a lot of relevant information, to carry out the impact of technical standards on three aspects of international trade, regional structure, product structure analysis, and particular from the international standard, developed national standards, national standards in developing countries such as different types of technical standards for the trade effects of differences in empirical test, to make up for the vacancy-related areas of research, provides theoretical and empirical basis and reliable technical standards for the proposed policy recommendations.The third Innovation of this article is to reflect in the methods of technology, economy, law, the relevant disciplines are combined. Trade development studies from the technical point of view, the technological progress, technological innovation into technical criteria for analyzing the impact of international trade framework to analyze the impact of technology on trade; From the perspective of economics study technology standards, analysis techniques characteristic of the trade Mechanism of Competitive Advantage and trade impact of competitive disadvantage, and enriching the contents of economics research; technical standards proposed building policy from a legal perspective, reflecting the thinking with the rule of law, legal means to solve the problem.The fourth of the article is in the conclusion innovation, puts forward some new ideas. First, technological innovation, product quality and the formation of competitive advantage for trade, technical standards difference, patents and other trade has an important influence on the formation of a competitive disadvantage; The second is the standard level of technology differences have important implications for international trade, regional structure, products, differences between developed and developing countries, the level of technology is an important factor leading to competitive advantage in international trade and the formation of a competitive disadvantage, for a country to promote the development of international trade should gradually increases its domestic standard technical level; The third is the developing countries can take advantage of technical standards for network effects and economies of scale, actively enhance the level of technical standards, and actively participate in international standards development, access to trade competitive advantage; Fourth, developed standard-setting process is the process of its monopoly, which should be through the development of technical standards policy and play technology standards for promoting trade and inhibit hinder trade development between developed and developing countries balance.To sum up, this article studies the mechanism of technical standards on the impact of international trade in theory, in the empirical analysis of the technical standards on the extent of the impact on international trade, combining with domestic and international technical standards policy, the proposed Free Trade Area of China technical standard policy recommendations, hoping this research can do for our country to develop technical standards for the implementation of policies and development strategies of China’s foreign trade to provide some reference and help.