| With the changing of international economic situation,China’s trade environment is gradually deteriorating.In the domestic,the population structure changes,and the population aging problem highlights,then the demographic dividend gradually disappears.The demographic dividend in other developing countries are gradually highlights,and the processing trade of China’s coastal areas gradually shifted out.China’s export pattern which dependents on low-cost exports to increase the export volume cannot be sustained,relying on the foreign trade pattern of cheap labor cost cannot achieve sustainable growth,and trade pattern need to change.Export product quality upgrading is the core of trade pattern transformation.On the other hand,the environmental problems brought by China’s extensive development pattern have gradually received the attention of the government and the public.The China’s government has incorporated the protection environment into the basic national’s policy and incorporated the eco-city construction and emission reduction targets into the government’s medium-and long-term planning.At present,China’s foreign trade is facing the challenge of trade pattern transformation and environmental regulation.Environmental regulation is bound to affect the export of manufacturing industry.In this context,this dissertation will explore the effect of the environment on the export product quality.We carry out research mainly from four aspects of the subject.First,calculate the China’s export product quality and the China’s environmental total factor productivity.In this dissertation,we consider the advantages and disadvantages of various methods and data constraints,choosing the method of Henn et al.(2015)who proposed a standard gravity model based on the export product quality.This dissertation uses the UN Comtrade data to measure the quality of 847 products exported by China to 177 countries from 1995 to 2014.Matching the SITC product code with the China’s national economic industry,we use the product of the years’ exports as the weight and calculate China’s 27 manufacturing industries’ weighted average product quality.Using the industrys’ exports as the weight and calculate China’s weighted average export product quality.The result shows that the export product quality in most of China’s manufacturing industries are increasing from 1995 to 2014,and the China’s total export product quality has increased significantly since 2009.The calculating of the environmental total factor productivity is divided into two steps.The first step is calculating the static environmental production efficiency-using the directional slacks based measure of inefficiency(SBI)of the data envelopment analysis(DEA).The second step is combining the static environmental production efficiency at different times to generate dynamic environmental total factor productivity growth rate index(indicator)-using Luenberger productivity indicator.However,the existing methods of estimating the environmental total factor productivity by using the SBI and Luenberger productivity indicator has a significant shortcoming in the second step,leading to the underestimate of the environmental total factor productivity.This dissertation analyzes the causes of the shortcoming,and improves the calculation method,and estimates the China’s environmental total factor productivity of 27 manufacturing industries from 1995 to 2014.Then decomposing the environmental total factor productivity into efficiency change,technological progress,input savings rate,desirable output productivity,and undesirable output reduction rate.The result shows that the China’s environmental total factor productivity fluctuates greatly from 1995 to 2014,and increased since 2005.Second,measuring the effect of environmental regulation on China’s environmental total factor productivity.This dissertation validates the "strong Porter Hypothesis’ from three perspectives of the whole,the high pollution industry and the low pollution industry.Analyzing the effects of environmental regulation on China’s environmental total factor productivity and its decomposition items(efficiency change,technological progress,input saving rate,desirable output productivity and undesirable output reduction rate)from 2001 to 2014.The result shows that the intensity of environmental regulation is weak in China’s manufacturing industries.There has room for growth and strengthening environmental regulation to promote the environmental factor productivity growth is necessary.In the whole sample,the effects of environmental regulation on environmental total factor productivity,efficiency change,technological progress and desirable output productivity conform to Ushape curves.Environmental regulations of most samples and industries are located at the left of the inflection point.The effect of environmental regulation on undesirable output reduction conforms to N-shape curves,and environmental regulations of most samples and industries are located at the left of the first inflection point.In the high pollution industry,the effects of environmental regulation on efficiency change,input savings rate and desirable output productivity are negative.The effects of environmental regulation on environmental total factor productivity,technological progress and undesirable output reduction rate conform to U-shape curves,and most the samples are at the left of the inflection point.In the low pollution industry,the effects of environmental regulation on environmental total factor productivity and technological progress are negative.The effects of environmental regulation on efficiency change,input savings rate,desirable output productivity and undesirable output reduction rate conform to inverted U-shape,N-shape,inverted N-shape and N-shape curves,most of the samples are located at the left of the smallest inflection point.Third,measuring the effect of environmental total factor productivity on China’s export product quality.This dissertation first constructs the theoretical model of how environmental total factor productivity affects the export product quality,and discusses the optimal products’ quality choices of enterprises under closed economy and open economy.Then based on the theoretical model,we analyzed the non-linear influence of environmental total factor productivity and its decomposition items(efficiency change,technological progress,input saving rate,desirable output productivity and undesirable output reduction rate)on China’s export product quality from 1995 to 2014.In addition,industry competitiveness,capital intensity,wages,R&D and foreign capital penetration are added as control variables in the econometric analysis.Finally,analyzing the influence of the Interactive items which is the environmental total factor productivity and control variables on export product quality.The result shows that the effect of environmental total factor productivity and technological progress on the export product quality conform to the N-shape curves.The effect of efficiency change on the export product quality conforms to the inverted N-shape curves.The effect of input saving rate on the export product quality conforms to U-shape curves.The effect of desirable output productivity and undesirable output reduction rate on the export product quality conform to the inverted U-shape curves.We calculated the different curves’ inflection points,and counted the number of samples and industries in the corresponding interval.We found that in most samples and industries,the improvement of the environmental total factor productivity could promote the upgrading of the export product quality.The main source of the export product quality upgrading are technology progress,input saving rate,desirable output productivity and efficiency change.Undesirable output reduction rate inhibits the upgrading of export product quality.In the Interactive items analysis,the interaction items between environmental total factor productivity and industry competitiveness,R&D,foreign capital penetration are positive,and the interaction with capital intensity and wage are negative.When the control variables are averaged,we add the environmental total factor productivity’s coefficient to the interactions’ coefficient and find that the effect of environmental total factor productivity on the export product quality are negative in all regression groups.Although the growth of environmental total factor productivity in most of the samples will promote the upgrading of export product quality,the effect of other small samples may be greater,so the overall environmental total factor productivity is negative for the export product quality.Fourth,measuring the effect of environmental regulation on China’s export product quality,and setting the environmental total factor productivity as the mediator.On the basis of the previous analyses,we consider that environmental regulation can have effect on export product quality in two ways,one is direct effect and the other is the indirect effect through environmental total factor productivity.This dissertation analyzes the direct effect and overall effect of environmental regulation on China’s export product quality from the perspective of the whole,the high pollution industry and the low pollution industry from 2001 to 2014.The result shows that,in the whole sample,the direct effect of environmental regulation on export product quality can promote product upgrades,but the indirect effect of environmental regulation may inhibit the upgrading of export product quality.It is necessary to increase the intensity of environmental regulation and promote the upgrading of products’ quality.In the high pollution industry,the direct effect of environmental regulation on export product quality is negative and there is no significant indirect effect.In the low pollution industry,the direct effect of environmental regulation on export product quality is positive,and the indirect effect is negative in some intervals.Excessive environmental regulation is not conducive to the upgrading of export product quality. |
