The Study Of The Influence Of Cultural Distance On Import And Export Trade Efficiency Of China

With the change of world economic pattern,developed countries frequently broke the original international economic rules and protectionism has been rising around the world,causing a lot of trade frictions.In this situation,the growth rate of 90%of the world’s economies slowed in 2019,and also the world foreign trade is not optimistic.However,trade growth is an important force for global economic growth,constrained by trade efficiency and trade potential.To achieve the goal of high-quality development for China in new era,we must improve trade efficiency.On the issue of the efficiency of international trade,most of studies take the formal systems into account such as economics,politics,and economic and trade arrangements.They rarely involve national cultural distances,nor do they analyze how culture affect import and export trade efficiency as informal system.In fact,international trade is conducted in a cross-cultural environment,and economy and culture are inseparable.So it’s of great significance to study the rule of cultural factors on foreign trade efficiency.First,this paper reviews the study status of cultural distance and trade efficiency and cultural distance’s effect on trade.Secondly,it analyzes the status quo of China’s foreign trade development and trade efficiency,and the three characteristics of the development of trade efficiency are pointed out and measured.Then,it studies how cultural distance affects trade efficiency in theories.Based on this,using the data of 2008-2017 years between China and 59 trading partners,this paper uses the Stochastic Frontier Gravity model and the Trade Non-efficiency model via the theory of Hofstede cultural dimension to analyze and explain how cultural distance influences China’s import and export efficiency.Research content and conclusions are as follows:First,the overall cultural distance has a significant negative impact on the import and export trade efficiency of China.When culture is divided as split variable,import trade efficiency is negatively affected by individualism index and uncertainty avoidance.Export trade efficiency is negatively affected by the power distance index and individualism index;secondly,import efficiency is more susceptible to cultural factors than export efficiency.This may be related to the structure of the country of origin of China’s imports and exports;third,there are group differences in the influence of cultural distance on the efficiency of China’s import and export trade.Different cultural systems are influenced by different dimensions of cultural distance on trade efficiency,which fully shows the complex influence of cultural factors on trade;finally,the burden of customs procedures has a significant impact to import trade efficiency,while export efficiency is more susceptible to infrastructure levels,and FTAs and financial market development have different effects on the efficiency of import and export trade.