The Effects Of Technological Progress In Green Trade Barriers

Along with the traditional trade barriers gradually fade out. green trade barrier has become the most popular way of the non-tariff barriers in international trade. Because of its certain rationality and legitimacy, green trade barrier has been used by many countries to protect their domestic market and it has become the most efficient way to prevent foreign products to enter the domestic market.The influence of green trade barrier to international trade is enormous and far-reaching. The excuses of GTB include ecological resources protection. environment and human health protection and so on. According to the report of WTO. the global number of green trade standard in2000was606and in2012the global number of the GTB has become into2185, the cumulative number during2000-2012was15490. The widely application of the green trade barriers is a new-big challenge to traditional export countries, like China. Throughout the domestic and foreign scholars’ study, we found that most studies of the economic effects of green trade barriers have showed a negative evaluation and conclusion. On the basis of the existing literature, combined with the actual situation of China, this article researched the relationship between green trade barriers and total factor productivity in both theoretical and empirical ways. Firstly, we elaborated the dynamic mechanism of technological innovation and the theories that related. Then we collected the GTB data of China’s major trading partners during2000-2012that reported by WTO. to measure the level of green trade barriers. Then we estimated the TFP index of China with the data of China during2000-2012, by use of data envelopment analysis. On the basis of the data collection, we constructed a static panel econometric model to test the effects of green trade barriers on Chinese progress in technology empirically. In the model, we used TFP index as the dependent variable, GTB and a set of control variables as explanatory variables. The empirical results show that not only the level of imports (IM), research and development input (RD), foreign direct investment (FDI) and average education years (EDU) have a positive effect on TFP index, the report number (s) of GTB which stand for the level of green trade barrier, also have a positive effect on TFP index. On this basis, we conclude that the green trade barriers have a significant-positive effect on China’s technical progress. Finally, according to the empirical results and the actual situation of China, the paper proposes the countermeasures and Suggestions.