A Comparative Study On International Competitiveness Of Financial Service Trade In BRICS Countries

With the change in the overall pattern of the world and the adjustment of economic order,emerging economies play an increasingly important role in the global trade.As the "BRICS"(China,Brazil,India,Russian Federation and South Africa)have become the representative of the emerging economies,they not only gain good growth prospects,but also the world’s attention.In recent years,with the increasing degree of the financial market opening up in the "BRICS",financial service trade has been under a rapid development and boosts the country’s economic level to a large extent.Although the development momentum is good,there’s still a certain gap between the financial services trade international competitiveness level of BRICS and the developed countries,owning to the late start,the limits of the countries’ financial market and other factors.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the real situation of financial services trade between China and other BRICS countries,using scientific indicators to assess their international competitiveness.This paper first reviews some relevant classical literature,defines the basic concepts of financial service trade and international competitiveness,introduces the international competitive advantage theory,and uses the international market share(MS)index,trade competitiveness(TC)index and Revealed Comparative Advantage(RCA)index as the main body of the International Competitiveness Evaluation system.Then,on account of the import and export data of BRICS’ financial services trade from 2005 to 2015,this paper compares and analyzes the current situation of the international competitiveness of BRICS’ financial services trade,based on MS index,TC index and RCA index.The results show that the "BRICS" financial services trade international competitiveness is generally weak,and the development is uneven.Among them,India is in a leading edge in the international market share and Revealed Comparative Advantage index than the other four countries;South Africa shows a thriving situation in the financial services trade competitiveness indicators;China’s financial services trade,however,is in the weak position compared to the other four economies.Although the indicators are showing a rising trend,the international market share is still in a low position,the deficit nature of financial services trade is still no changed and the international competitiveness is still weak.Later on,on the basis of Porter’s "Diamond Model" theory,this paper makes an empirical analysis of the panel data of the BRICS countries from 2005 to 2015.This paper uses the TC index of the financial service trade as the dependent variable,the tertiary education enrollment rate,the urban population rate,the internet user rate,the FDI to GDP ratio,the export value of the commodity trade,the financial market concentration rate and the opening of the financial services trade as the independent variables.It aims to analyze the financial services trade competitiveness of the BRICS using a Cross-sectional time-series FGLS regression analysis.The empirical results show that the openness of financial services trade,one of the seven independent variables,has the most significant impact on the TC index of financial services in one country.Among the five countries,the openness of financial services trade positively correlate with the TC index of the financial services trade,and the coefficient is 67.962,This means that an increase in the level of national financial services trade liberalization can greatly enhance the country’s international competitiveness of financial services trade.So it can be seen that the government factor has a significant causal relationship with the competitiveness of the country.At the same time,the urban population rate,the internet user rate,the FDI to GDP ratio and the financial market concentration rate are also positively correlated with TC index,which means that an increase in these variables will lead to the improvement of the financial service trade competitiveness.However,the coefficient between tertiary education enrollment rates,the merchandise trade export value and the TC index are negative;indicating that an increase in the amount of merchandise trade export and tertiary education enrollment might decrease the international competitiveness of financial services to some degree.Therefore,the governments should pay attention to the control of the total amount and growth rate of the merchandise trade export,and control the enrollment of the tertiary education to a certain degree.Finally,based on the conclusion of empirical analysis,this paper puts forward four suggestions on how to enhance the international competitiveness of China’s financial services trade,namely:increasing the opening level of financial market and promoting the liberalization of financial services trade,optimizing the structure of financial services trade and enhancing the export advantage of financial services,cultivating talents of financial industry and actively shifting to an export-oriented country,further strengthening the cooperation with other four BRICS countries in financial sector and jointly enhance the international competitiveness of financial service trade.