Research On Technology Progress Effects On Trade Competitiveness

Must technology progress improve trade competitiveness? The paper answers this question. First, we study the classic trade theories and new trade theories to find why and how technology progress change trade competitiveness, and get a result that some technology progress can harm trade competitiveness of industry. Second, we decompose Chinese industry to four types: resource-intensity, labor-intensity, capital-intensity, technology-intensity, and apply Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to calculate the degree of their technology. Then, we regress the panel data of different industries in china in 1990-2004, the GLS regression shows in every industry, there is some technology progress damage their trade competitiveness, and it proofs the former result. However, if we choose proper technology progress basing on the type of industry, it still be the most effective method to improve trade competitiveness.The main part of the paper elaborates the influential mechanism from technological progress to international trade competitiveness in the following three stages: 1.technology progressâ†'factor-intensity, incomeâ†'international trade competitiveness, 2. technology progressâ†'output, trade termâ†'international trade competitiveness, 3. technology progressâ†'industrial structureâ†'international trade competitiveness.Through analysis, we notice that labor-save technology progress makes an uncertain impact on the international trade competitiveness. On the basis of this discovery, we employed the modified "gravity model" and GLS to do empirical analysis on the whole manufacturing industry including 31 industries and the situation how the technological progress of the four main factors-intensity industry can influence the competitiveness. The result manifests that:1.Generally speaking, technological progress is an important force to accelerate the international trade competitiveness currently, among which the enhancement of VRS-technology efficiency and allocate efficiency is extremely crucial to the promotion. However, the effect from the technological innovation to the international trade competitiveness turns out to be ambiguous.2.0bserving from different factor-intensity industry, we find that among resource-intensity industry, capital-intensity industry, technology-intensity industry, the advancement of VRS-technology efficiency would create conspicuous positive effect on their international trade competitiveness, similarly, in labor-intensity industry, the improvement of the allocate efficiency would benefit its international trade competitiveness, nevertheless, the technological innovation's impact on the international trade competitiveness among resource-intensity industry , capital-intensity industry, labor-intensity industry is not clear, and in technology-intensity industry, allocate efficiency has an uncertain impact on its international trade competitiveness as well. Therefore, in order to elevate the international trade competitiveness, we need to choose the appropriate type of technological progress.