| By December 31,2021,a total of 21 pilot free trade zones had been set up across China since the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone was established in 2013.The large-scale establishment of pilot free trade zones is not only conducive to accelerating the formation of a fully open economic pattern domestically and promoting the coordinated development of regional economy,thus promoting the formation of an all-dimensional,multi-level and diversified opening pattern,but also conducive to improving the regional capacity to serve the national comprehensive development strategy.For example,The realization of full coverage of pilot free trade zones in the Yangtze River Delta will help promote regional integration in the region.However,whether the establishment of the free trade zone really has a positive promoting effect on the economic growth of all provinces and cities needs to be empirically analyzed.In December 2019,the Outline of The Yangtze River Delta Regional Integration Development Plan was released.The evaluation of the regional economic growth effect of Zhejiang Free Trade Zone will further reveal the development potential of Zhejiang Free Trade Zone,and provide experience reference for the development of the free trade zones of Yangtze River Delta and the gradual realization of national income improvement.This paper takes the Zhejiang Free Trade Zone in the Yangtze River Delta as an example,based on the statistical data of the three economic indicators of the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of the quarterly real GDP,the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of the quarterly import value and the cumulative year-on-year growth rate of the quarterly export value of the domestic provinces and cities from January 2006 to June 2019.Counterfactual analysis and regression control are used to evaluate and analyze the economic growth effect of Zhejiang Free Trade Zone.Based on the AIC information criterion and the goodness of fit,the optimal combination of provinces and cities was selected as the control group of this study.The true and counterfactual values of the three economic indicators of Zhejiang province before and after the free trade zone policy were predicted respectively,and the policy effects in Zhejiang were obtained by comparing the real economic data in corresponding quarters.Finally,the empirical results were found to be robust by randomly advancing the policy implementation time by one year to a placebo test.The empirical results show that the free trade zone has a very significant positive effect on the growth of import volume in Zhejiang,which shows the success of Zhejiang Free Trade Zone in attracting foreign investors,and the acceleration and slowdown of import volume in the positive effect show quarterly differences.The establishment of Zhejiang Free Trade Zone also has a positive promoting effect on the regional real GDP growth rate,but the effect is not very obvious.Considering the competition of economy,trade and industry and close contact,this can be explained from the perspective of the following free trade policy in promoting the economy of one aspect of the larger ascension,also other aspects of the regional economy have a certain degree of negative influence,for example,imports greatly improve,will more or less to weaken local enterprises in Zhejiang’s local competitive advantage and production.Zhejiang’s export growth rate shows a slight decline in the overall effect,that is,there is a negative effect,which from the perspective of foreign trade competitiveness,Zhejiang’s export trade competitiveness is not good enough to grasp the policy opportunities to strengthen cooperation with foreign investors,at the same time,there is a certain time lag policy effect.Based on the empirical research results,this paper puts forward three policy suggestions for the development of Zhejiang Free Trade Zone and even the Yangtze River Delta region.Continue to optimize the business environment in Zhejiang,vigorously support and encourage the development of innovative industries in Zhejiang,and the free trade zones of Yangtze River Delta should developed in an integrated and dislocated manner. |
