| The uncertainty of economic policy refers to the unpredictable elements in economic policy,which makes it difficult for market participants to accurately judge the government,s decision-making in the future.The purpose of economic policy making is to solve the problems in economic operation and maintain stable economic growth,but the complex real economy makes economic policy full of uncertainty.Since the outbreak of the global financial crisis in 2008,a series of "black swan" events have occurred,such as the European debt crisis,the Brexit and the Sino-US trade friction.With the trade protectionism and De-globalization being a focusing heat point,the economic policies issued by various countries are characterized is rising.The high level of economic policy uncertainty reflects the tension and complexity of international economic and trade situation.It is worth noting that when the uncertainty of economic policy is strong,global trade is just in a state of low growth,and even a temporary "trade collapse" situation once occurred.Then,are they related in a way?In addition,the international trade competitiveness of a country depends not only on the volume of trade,but also on the content of technology.Therefore,under the realistic background of high degree of economic policy uncertainty and the sluggish import and export trade,to explore the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export trade has become a new and important issue.If the economic policy uncertainty restrains the expansion of import and export scale and the increase of import and export technological sophistication,what measures should be taken to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty and promote the steady development of global trade?The discussion of the above issues can provide policy implications for the countries in the world to realize the sustainable and healthy development of foreign trade under the background of the increasing global economic policy uncertainty.The possible marginal contribution of this paper is as follows:first,from the perspective of import and export respectively,to investigate the impact of economic policy uncertainty on international trade,which makes up for the lack of existing research focusing more on export trade but less on import trade,and helps to better understand the relationship between economic policy uncertainty and international trade.Second,the use of product quantity equal division method to combine "quantity" and "technology content" to investigate the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export products with different technology content,which can more intuitively reflect the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export products of specific technology categories,and enrich the research on import and export technology structure.Third,from the perspective of empirical evidence,this paper discusses how to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export trade,which is of great practical significance to the development of foreign trade in the new international economic situation,and also makes a useful supplement to the existing literature.Fourth,on the basis of cross-border panel data to explore the above issues,the research focus is turned to China,using manufacturing industry panel data and monthly time series data,on the one hand,from the industry level to explore the overall impact and heterogeneity of China’s economic policy uncertainty on the import and export trade scale and technological sophistication of various manufacturing industries.On the other hand,it discusses the time-varying influence of economic policy uncertainty on China’s import and export scale.So as to improve the pertinence of the research.This research mainly uses two research methods:normative analysis and empirical analysis.First of all,it discusses the influence mechanism of economic policy uncertainty on import scale,import technological sophistication,export scale and export technological sophistication,and puts forward corresponding assumptions.Secondly,based on cross-border panel data,China’s industry panel data and time series data,using diversified linear modeling technology and non-linear modeling technology,this paper discusses the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export trade.In addition,using comparative analysis method,when discussing the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import trade and export trade based on cross-border panel data,the paper compares the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export trade of different categories of products.Based on China’s industry data,this paper discusses the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export trade,and compares the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import and export scale,import and export technological sophistication of different types of industries.The research work and conclusions are as follows:Firstly,this paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import trade from two aspects:one is import scale,while the other one is import technological sophistication,and explores the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the heterogeneity of different technology categories of imported products.In this chapter,we use the HS6 digit code trade data provided by CEPII-BACI database to further calculate the technological sophistication index of a country’s imports based on the calculation of the technological sophistication index of products.Then,based on the cross-border balance panel data of 22 countries in 2004-2017 with the index of economic policy uncertainty,using the system generalized moment estimation(SYS-GMM),this paper analyzes the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import trade from the dimensions of "quantity" and "technology content",that is,the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import scale and import technological sophistication.In the extended study,we combine the "quantity" and "technology content" of import trade,divide the technology categories of import products based on the product quantity equal division method,and further investigate the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the differentiation of different technology categories of import products.The results show that in the dimension of "quantity",economic policy uncertainty has a negative impact on the scale of imports.In the dimension of "technology content",economic policy uncertainty has a certain negative impact on the imported technology sophistication.Combining the dimension of "quantity" with "technology content",the influence of economic policy uncertainty on imports of different technology categories is different.For products with relatively high technological complexity,the increase of economic policy uncertainty will restrain their imports,while for products with relatively low technological sophistication,the increase of economic policy uncertainty will not affect their imports significantly.This indicates that imports with relatively high technological sophistication are more sensitive to economic policy uncertainty than imports with relatively low technological sophistication.Secondly,based on the conclusion of the preliminary study that"economic policy uncertainty has a negative impact on import trade",this chapter use nonlinear modeling technology to find effective measures to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on import trade from domestic market scale and factor endowment.The preliminary study of this paper shows that economic policy uncertainty has a negative impact on import trade.The resulting problem is,how to reduce this negative impact?This chapter uses the panel threshold regression model,taking the domestic market scale,factor endowment(physical capital and human capital)as the threshold variable,to explore whether expanding the scale of domestic market and accumulating factor endowment are effective methods to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on import scale and import technology sophistication.The results show that in the model of import scale,when the scale of domestic market is small,the negative influence of economic policy uncertainty on import scale is large.When the scale of domestic market is large,the negative influence of economic policy uncertainty on import scale is small.When the scale of domestic market reaches a certain degree,the negative influence of economic policy on import scale is completely disappeared.When physical capital and human capital are small,the negative influence of economic policy uncertainty on import scale is large,when physical capital and human capital are large,the negative influence of economic policy uncertainty is small,when physical capital accumulates to a certain extent,the influence of economic policy uncertainty on import scale becomes insignificant and positive.In the import technological sophistication model,with the increase of the scale of the domestic market,the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on import technological sophistication is weakened,when the level of physical capital is higher,the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on the import technology sophistication tends to be weakened.This shows that expanding the scale of domestic market and increasing factor endowment accumulation can help to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on import trade.Therefore,countries should pay more attention to the domestic market,fully tap the potential of the domestic market,and take into account the accumulation of physical capital and the cultivation of talents,so as to reduce the impact of economic policy uncertainty on import trade.Thirdly,this paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on export scale and export technological sophistication,and further explores the impact of economic policy uncertainty on the heterogeneity of export products of different technology categories.This chapter based on the CEPII-BACI database,the export technology sophistication index of a country is calculated,and the measurement index of export technology sophistication is obtained.Then this chapter divides export trade into two dimensions "quantity" and "technology content",constructs static panel model,using mixed OLS,fixed effect model and random effect model as benchmark regression to discusses the influence of economic policy uncertainty on export scale and export technology sophistication firstly.Using the instrumental variables generalized moment estimation(IV-GMM)method to solve the endogenous problems.In the extended research,this chapter use product quantity equal division method to divide the export product into different technology category,use the instrumental variables generalized moment estimation(IV-GMM)method to investigate the influence of economic policy uncertainty on export products with different technology content.The results show that the influence of economic policy uncertainty on different dimensions of export trade are both negative.In the dimension of "quantity",the increase of economic policy uncertainty will restrain the expansion of country’s export scale.In the dimension of "technology content",the increase of economic policy uncertainty will hinder the increase of a country’s export technology sophistication.Considering the combination of export trade "quantity" and "technology content",it can be found that the influence of economic policy uncertainty on export products of different technology categories is quiet different.The concrete manifestation is that the economic policy uncertainty has no obvious influence on the export products with relatively low technology sophistication,and has a strong negative impact on the export products with relatively high technology sophistication.Fourthly,based on the research results of the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on export trade,this paper further explores whether it is an effective way to strengthen the construction of institutional environment and expand the scale of import to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on export trade.The preliminary research of this paper shows that the uncertainty of economic policy has a negative impact on the scale of export and the export technological sophistication.So in an environment of economic policy uncertainty,what measures should be taken to reduce this negative influence?Combined with the existing research and reality,this chapter uses the panel threshold regression model,taking institutional environment and import scale as threshold variables to explore whether strengthening institutional environment construction and expanding import scale are effective means to reduce the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on export scale and export technological sophistication.The results show that when the institutional environment is taken as the threshold variable,before the institutional environment crosses the threshold,the economic policy uncertainty has a.strong negative impact on the export scale and export technological sophistication.After the institutional environment crosses the threshold,the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on export scale and export technological sophistication tends to be weak.When the import scale is taken as the threshold variable,before the import scale crosses the threshold,the economic policy uncertainty has a strong negative impact on export scale,after the import scale crosses the threshold,the influence of the economic policy uncertainty on the export scale become positive,but not significant.Such a result shows that strengthening the institutional environment and expanding the scale of imports are effective way to reduce the negative influence of economic policy uncertainty on export.Fifth,this paper studies the impact of economic policy uncertainty on China’s import and export trade based on Chinese data.Based on the previous research,this paper focuses on China and carries out the following two studies.On one hand,this paper based on the panel data of 27 manufacturing industries in China from 2005 to 2017,constructed the dynamic panel model to study the influence of economic policy uncertainty on China’s import and export trade.Firstly,the impact of China’s economic policy uncertainty on import and export scale and technology sophistication in various manufacturing industries is discussed.It should be noted that the import and export technology sophistication index of China’s manufacturing industry is calculated based on CEPII-BACI database,and the calculation process involves the conversion between HS2002 product code and GB/T2002.Secondly,the manufacturing industry is classified into labor-intensive industries and capital-intensive industries.On the other hand,based on the monthly time series data of China from January 2004 to November 2019,this paper build the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model(TVP-VAR)to discuss the dynamic impact effect of economic policy uncertainty shock on China’s import scale and export trade scale.The results show that the economic policy uncertainty has a significant negative impact on the import scale,import technology sophistication,export scale and export technology sophistication of each manufacturing industry.That is,with the increase of economic policy uncertainty level,the import scale,export scale,import technology sophistication and export technology sophistication have declined.As far as different types of industries are concerned,the impact of economic policy uncertainty on labor-intensive industries and capital-intensive industries is negative,but the impact intensity is different.The negative influence of economic policy uncertainty on import and export trade in capital-intensive industries is more intense.The impact of economic policy uncertainty on import scale and export scale is common and different.In terms of generality,the influence of economic policy uncertainty on import trade and export trade has significant time-varying characteristics,and this time-varying characteristic is related to the inverse periodicity of economic policy uncertainty.When the economy is relatively weak,the level of economic policy uncertainty is high,and the negative impact of economic policy uncertainty on China’s import scale and export scale is greater.When the economic operation is relatively stable,the level of economic policy uncertainty is low,and the impact on China’s import and export trade is mainly positive.In terms of differences,from the second half of 2018 to the end of the sample,the impact of economic policy uncertainty on China’s import scale is negative,and the impact on China’s export scale is positive.Based on the above,this paper puts forward the following policy recommendations:in order to ease the trade tension,countries should try their best to ensure the stability and continuity of economic policies,guide enterprises to make good use of hedging tools,stimulate domestic consumer demand and enterprise import demand,increase the input of material capital and human capital elements,strengthen the construction of institutional environment,actively participate in regional economic cooperation.In particular,for China,to cope with the adverse effects of economic policy uncertainty,we should continue to adhere to the "expanding imports" program and firmly seize the Belt and Road initiative under the guidance of the concept of a community of shared future for mankind. |
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