| This paper firstly introduces the definition of Technical Barriers to Trade(TBTs),distinguishing them from other non-tariff trade barriers,and then clarifies the research progress of TBTs,product trade deflection and quality upgrading through literature review.This paper secondly introduces the historical background,the development and characteristics of TBTs in the new era,and clears the implementation process of TBTs and Special Trade Concerns(STCs)through WTO notification platform.It also analyzes how China respond to other trade partner's TBTs and how China notify the TBTs,as well as typical cases on how Chinese firms affected by foreign TBTs.Based on the theoretical model of heterogeneous firms with multi-products and trade deflection model,this paper characterizes the shock of TBTs in the form of both fixed cost and variable cost,and introduces product quality parameter,to finally build a model depicting how TBTs affecting firm's export behaviors on export value,quantity,price,quality,dynamic decision-making and trade deflection to other destinations.By collecting and matching data of bilateral TBTs and STCs for all WTO members,this paper unifies the matched data to HS6 product-level.Further,it matches the unified data onto the Chinese firm-product-destination-year level export data.Using the data above,this paper carries out empirical analysis on how TBT-STC affect firm's export behavior in extensive and intensive margins,as well as trade deflection and quality upgrading.Furthermore,robust checks of different firm heterogeneous characteristics are also checked.From the perspective of extensive margin,TBT-STCs imposed by China's trade partners have resulted in a significant decrease in the total number of export firms in relevant product-destination markets.Among them,the numbers of entrants and survivors both decrease significantly,and the number of entrants suffers from a greater negative impact.This effect remains true when the sample is restricted to ordinary trade regime,or with a lag of two years.At the firm-product-destination market level,the impact of TBT-STCs from developed economies drives Chinese firms to exit from the destinations with barriers in the next year.This effect is particularly true for direct manufacturers,but not for trade intermediaries.Moreover,this exit inclination is significant for exporters with less quantity or value in relevant products.Firms with different ownership types perform differently under this shock.From the perspective of intensive margin,TBT-STCs from developed economies leads to a significant reduction in the quantity and value of China's exports at the product-destination level,but the impact of which at the firm-product-destination level is not significant.The reason is that the TBT-STCs from developed economies imposes different effects on entrants and survivors.Due to TBT-STCs significantly reduce the total number of exporters in the targeted market,those targeted markets become more attractive to some entrants and those entrants exhibit significantly increased export quantity.This opportunity is mainly seized by entrants with private ownership.On the contrary,the export quantity for the survivors in relevant markets decreases significantly,and this trade dampening effect exists for firms with ownership types of state-owned,private,foreign,and joint venture.In terms of trade deflection,TBT-STCs from developed economies also exert different effects on entrants and survivors.TBT-STCs from developed economies in pervious year leave less competitors,thus some entrants in the current year not only increase the export quantity,their worldwide market portfolio also become more focused on those attractive market,showing a significant reduction in export quantity to the rest of the world.On the contrary,for the survivors,there is no significant trade deflection effect.At the same time,firms exited from previous markets due to TBTSTCs exhibit a significant trade deflection effect,with significantly increased total export volume to other trading partners.In addition,on the whole,the stronger the firm's production capacity,the larger the deflection scale.More specifically,firms with stronger production capacity tend to deflect to new market;while the firms with lower production capacity tend to deflect to existing markets.In terms of product quality,the impact of TBT-STCs from developed economies on Chinese exports shows a quality upgrading effect,which is mainly reflected in firms with poor quality which tend to exit the market,and there also exits improvement of product quality for survivors and entrants.This quality upgrade effect mainly appears in the direct manufacturer sample.Furthermore,private and foreign firms show particularly prominent quality upgrading effects.Taking the United States,a major source of TBTs for China,as an example,this paper also considers the heterogenous origin of STC opponents.Empirical results of triple difference-in-difference model show that,TBTs contribute to competition between different trading partners in the U.S.import market since announcement time point till compliance time point.On the one hand,exporters from the economy subjected to the TBT decrease their export value to the TBT imposing economy significantly(trade dampening effect).On the other hand,exporters from the third economy in the importing market grab the market share previously belonging to the economies subjected to the TBT(trade creation effect).There is also an expanded total number of new destinations for those negative affected firms.In addition,the price increasing effect is not robust.Finally,this paper also explores the driving factors of TBTs,and finds that both economic environment and diplomatic relations are important factors.At the same time,this paper measures the cluster effect for TBTs suffered by China,and finds that China's export products have been covered widely by TBTs,but there still exists certain country-product category cluster characteristic.This provides an important reference for the early warning alertness and policy arrangement,and helps the authorities to keep focused with specific directions.Based on the above solid research and analysis,this paper puts forward policy suggestions from the angles of the government function and enterprise countermeasures,to deal with the coming challenge of technical barriers to trade in the future. |
PDF Full Text Request