The Impact Of Trade Time On Export Trade Of CAFTA

After China-ASEAN Free Trade Area being initiated in 2010,the trade volume between China and ASEAN has been on the rise.The latest figures suggest that,ASEAN have become China’s second largest trade partner in the first half of 2019.Even before then,ASEAN was once China’s third largest trade partner for seven consecutive years.The reason why CAFTA has been such a success,is policy dividend of tariff concessions in member countries.Now more than 90%of commodities already enjoy zero-tariff treatment in the zone.But with the cutting of tariff in large scope,the promotion effect of tariff on trade growth will be weakened or lost.Continue to place hope on tariff concession to promote deep integration of CAFTA,there will be lessand less room for it to play its role.Studies have shown that in the era of law tariffs,reducing trade time to achieve fast customs clearance is likely to be an important means to promote a substantial increase in trade volume.In recent years,foreign scholars have conducted some research on the relationship between time and international trade.However,there are still some shortcomings in these studies.First of all,most of these studies exist in the academic fields of Europe and the United States,and there are very few studies in Asia,especially in China’s academic circles.Secondly,most of the research is based on empirical analysis and is fragmented.At the theoretical level,it lacks the mechanism analysis of the influence of time on international trade.Finally,most of the existing literatures are based on individual countries,ignoring the regional differences that may exist.Therefore,the main contribution of this paper is to introduce trade time into the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area cross-border trade development research,in order to make up for the research gap in this field.At the same time,based on the existing literature,we will sort out the influence mechanism of time on international trade and provide relevant suggestions for deepening the development process of cross-border trade in CAFTA.This paper chooses the trade time indicators provided by the World Bank Doing Business Report,based on the export trade data of nine countries in the CAFTA from 2007 to 2015,examine the role of trade time on the export trade by using the expanded trade gravitation model.The results show that trade time has a significant negative effect on the total export trade of the CAFTA.For every 10%reduction in import trade time of importing countries,the total export trade of exporting countries can increase by 4.10%.On average,the importer’s import trade time is reduced by one day,which is equivalent to a reduction of 48 kilometers from the bilateral distance,which fully demonstrates that the hindrance effect of trade time on bilateral trade cannot be underestimated.In addition,we find that there is significant regional heterogeneity and product heterogeneity in the impact of trade time on export trade.Compared with intra-regional trade,reducing trade time has a greater role in promoting extra-regional trade.The trade volume of intermediate products is more affected by trade time than the trade volume of final products.Therefore,in the context of the tariff reduction dividend has basically subsided,by reducing trade time to improve trade efficiency,it can provide new impetus for the growth of export trade.This study is composed of five parts:The first part is the introduction,which briefly introduces the general background,significance and purpose of the study,and summarizes the results and approach of relevant international literature.Then combed the structure and content,summarized the innovation and shortcomings of this paper.The second part is the theoretical basis,which analyses the theory of trade time from economics and management.In economics,international trade theory is the main theory,including traditional trade theory,new trade theory and new economic geography theory,heterogeneous enterprises theory;in management,value chain theory is the main theory.The third part is the current situation and problems of CAFTA,which introduces the trade development of CAFTA and its position in the global production network from import and export characteristics,product structure.Then,introduced the trade facilitation situation,and summarized the main problems in the trade development of CAFTA.The fourth part is the empirical analysis which introduces the construction process of the regression model,including hypothesis,model setting,sample selection,variable selection and data sources.Next we give the empirical test and result analysis,including descriptive statistics,correlation analysis,model selection and equation estimation,empirical results analysis.The fifth part is the main conclusions and policy recommendations,which summarizes the conclusion of the impact of trade time on export trade in CAFTA both in theoretical and empirical methods,and puts forward corresponding policy recommendations based on the results.The main innovations of this paper are as follows:Firstly,it summarizes the theoretical basis of the impact of trade time on international trade from international trade theory and value chain theory,so that people can understand the relationship between trade time and international trade more comprehensively.People always use international trade theory to study international trade.However,the current international trade pattern is characterized by vertical intra-industry trade under the international production network dominated by multinationals.Therefore,combining the value chain theory can give a more comprehensive grasp.Secondly,it enriches the current research on trade facilitation in CAFTA.Initially incorporating the time factor into the evaluation index of trade facilitation,which enables people to understand trade facilitation from a new perspective and provides new reference directions for policy makers.Thirdly,few people have looked at China’s foreign trade from the perspective of trade time before.This paper fills this gap through empirical research,and expands people’s view of the past and present situation of China’s international trade.Since the research on trade time is still in its infancy,this paper still has the following inadequate:Firstly,because there are many factors that affect trade,this paper only expands the single variable of trade time on the basis of the gravity model,and some influential factors are not comprehensive considered.Secondly,due to the limitation of data availability,the empirical research in this paper is limited to a small number of samples.To a certain extent,the universality of research conclusions is discounted.Finally,because of lack of the profound investigation,the policy recommendations given in this paper are not specific enough and lack of pertinence.These inadequate are also expected to be overcome in future research.