Trade Policy Uncertainty、Intermediate Goods Trade And Enterprise Productivity

At the end of 2001,China joined the World Trade Organization and had an opportunity for all-round improvement of the level and quality of opening-up.China began to participate in international economic and technological cooperation and competition in a wider,broader and higher level.In terms of tariff policy,China has adjusted relevant import and export tariff standards gradually.It fulfilled its tax reduction commitments,lowered tariff levels substantially,and improved the stability of the enterprise’s trading environment.In terms of non-tariff policies,China follows the basic spirit and rules of the WTO strictly.It improves the system and adopts various anti-subsidy anti-dumping policies actively at the same time.Those measures have reduced the uncertainty of trade policies greatly.The decline of trade policy uncertainty is likely to promote the intermediate goods trade,while the intermediate goods import may help to bring advanced foreign technology and promote the productivity level of domestic enterprises.This paper cuts in from the perspective of trade policy uncertainty,analyzes the impact mechanism of trade policy uncertainty on intermediate goods trade and enterprise productivity,and the theoretical mechanism of intermediate goods trade on enterprise productivity.Using Micro-data of product level from China Customs Database and Industry Enterprise Database from 2001 to 2006 to measure the import trade volume of intermediate products and the productivity of enterprises.Then make an empirical test of the relevant theoretical hypotheses.This paper combs and summarizes the impact of trade policy uncertainty on firm productivity,the impact of trade policy uncertainty on intermediate trade,and the research literature on the impact of intermediate trade on firm productivity from the study of domestic and foreign scholars.On this basis,the paper puts forward that the uncertainty of trade policy can directly affect the productivity of enterprises,and it can also affect the productivity of enterprises through the trade of intermediate goods.The trade of intermediate goods can affect the productivity of enterprises through learning effect,horizontal effect and price effect.The paper uses a simple enterprise model to make model about the relationship among trade policy uncertainty,intermediate goods trade and enterprise productivity more theoretically.Then analyzes the impact of the decline in trade policy uncertainty to firm productivity and to the development of intermediate goods trade.Considering the realistic background of China’s accession to the WTO,the paper elaborates the impact of the decline in trade policy uncertainty on corporate development and the overall economy further.Making the combination from theoretical analysis conclusions and empirical research,the hypotheses are:firstly,the decline in trade policy uncertainty helps companies to form stable expectations,and promotes the productivity of enterprises;secondly,the development of intermediate goods trade has a positive effect on the productivity of enterprises;Thirdly,the decline in trade policy uncertainty has a positive effect on the development of intermediate goods trade,and the trade policy uncertainty can influence the productivity of enterprises through the intermediate goods trade.This paper mainly uses micro-data of product level from China Customs Database and Industry Enterprise Database from 2001 to 2006 to conduct an empirical test on the above research hypotheses.In order to make the arguments more convincing,the paper use the general least squares and fixed effect models to test the uncertainty of trade policy and enterprise productivity by stepwise regression firstly.Secondly,test the mechanism of intermediate trade and enterprise productivity and the mechanism of trade policy uncertainty and intermediate trade.Then,this paper divides into groups by the trade pattern,the nature of the enterprise and the industry sample to make regression.Finally,do a robust test.In the robust test,the paper uses OP method and LP method are used to re-estimate the productivity of enterprises,and calculate three kinds of trade policy uncertainties,then the robustness test is carried out by using the ordinary least squares method.The empirical analysis is in line with theoretical expectations:first,the decline of trade policy uncertainty will help to improve the productivity of enterprises;second,the development of intermediate goods trade will help promote the productivity of enterprises;third:the decline of trade policy uncertainty will help promote the development of intermediate goods trade,and then have a certain positive impact on the improvement of enterprise productivity.On the basis of theoretical and empirical analysis,this paper gives some countermeasures and suggestions from the perspective of government and enterprise.For government,it is recommended that the government should participate in international competition and cooperation actively to enhance the voice of the Chinese government in international organizations,and work to strengthen its economic strength,promote trade liberalization to reduce the uncertainty of trade policies.At the same time,the government can make policies to maintain the stability of market development and reduce tariffs and non-tariff concerns of enterprises about importing and exporting to encourage them to participate in trade actively,and absorb advanced foreign technology to enhance their competitiveness.In addition,the government should strengthen the support of private enterprises and improve the development system of private enterprises.They need to promote the development of processing trade vigorously.For enterprise,first,they need to optimize the import structure of intermediate products and improve the technical complexity of export products to enhance the competitiveness.Second,they need to enhance the ability of independent innovation and master core technologies to improve the productivity.They should enhance the China’s position in the global value chain in order to guard against the risks of trade policy uncertainty with stronger strength.Third,they should insist on going out to open up the market.Because make more suppliers will help enterprise expand and consolidate more trade partnerships.Therefore,they can be more powerful in the world market to make more profits.