Journal of International Trade is supervised by Ministry of Education of PRC, and sponsored by University of International Business and Economics. It aims to build up the top one academic journal with an international perspective in the field of economy and trade in China, and to provide services for China’s economic progress and enterprise development. The scope covers East Asia economic cooperation, regional trade, service trade, international investment and transnational operation, and international finance. The journal is included in CSSCI.
Editor-in-Chief Lin Guijun
Deputy Editor-in-Chief Tang Bi
Editorial Board Anthony Vennables(UK), David Round(Australia), Edmund Phelps(U.S.A.), E. Kwan Choi, Francisco Rivera-Batiz(U.S.A.), Gordon Anderson(Canada), Jagdish N. Bhagwati(U.S.A.), John Whal
Both the planned areas of the “One Belt and One Road” initiative or the distribution of RMB settlement volumes of cross-border trade show obvious regional differences. Based on the regional difference, extending the method to calculate the performance index and using the Dagum (1997) method, this paper computes the performance index of all provinces and regional differences of RMB settlement of cross-border trade in China, and examines the main influencing factors. The results show that the performance index of the eastern area is apparently higher than that of the central and western regions, and that of the western region is the worst; the overall gap of all the three regions is shrinking but the contribution rate of regional difference is always the highest; the main influencing factors are differentiated obviously from region to region. The planned area of “One Belt and One Road” centers on the eastern and western regions, and this would challenge the central region. Therefore, different regions should enhance cooperation to raise economic development level and RMB settlement of cross-border trade performance level and accelerate the process of RMB internationalization.
This study incorporates the heterogeneity of user cost of capital into the theoretical framework of HIR model to analyze the effects of export, heterogeneity of productivity, heterogeneity of screening labor and heterogeneity of user cost of capital on the wage gap in China. This study also empirically evaluates the effects by using China' s industrial firms' data from 1998 to 2007, and then simulates the extended model. The results show that heterogeneity has significant effects on a firm's wage, leading to the wage gap. After controlling heterogeneity of productivity, heterogeneity of screening labor and heterogeneity of user cost of capital, the study finds that the export wage premium of Chinese firms is about 2.8%, and the wage gap in export firms is smaller than that in non–export firms. Export wage premium is positively correlated to fixed export cost.
Using the 1999–2012 industrial panel data and dividing the industry by different factor intensities, this paper studies how the variation of wage affects China's export. It shows that the wage rise does harm to China's export in general. The wage rise significantly restrains the export of labor-intensive industry, while it assists the export of capital-intensive industry. Against the background of rising wage, the ascent of labor productivity also casts negative influence on export growth which is much more conspicuous in labor-intensive industry. From a dynamic view, the harm of the ascent of wage is slowly weakened as time flows and the effect of ascent of wage on export takes on a “U” shape.
By processing 2002–2012 export data of China and the United States from Chelem database, this paper estimates the added value of products and indexes of competition and complementarity of the two countries. The results reveal that in spite of faster total export growth, China's export shows a growth propensity towards middle and low value added products, and the export growth of the US, though relatively slower, is obviously biased towards high value added products. The export relationship between China and the US in the global market is still more complementary than competitive. The article further analyzes the export performances of China and the US in the EU market. The analysis demonstrates a contrast of competitiveness of the two countries and finds that the growth of Chinese export to the EU is rocketing but deviating from the import demand structure of the EU, which may render the export growth of China to the EU vulnerable in the future.
The pilot free trade zone establishes a "negative list" administrative model, aiming to provide pre-establishment national treatment and a negative list for China-US BIT negotiation on a trial basis. There are still several differences between Pilot Free Trade Zone negative list and China- US BIT negotiation negative list and its model text. This paper suggests that the modification of Pilot Free Trade Zone negative list should focus on reducing foreign investment restrictions, expanding the framework of the negative list, improving the elements of the negative list and enhancing the transparency of adoption of negative list.
On the basis of the latest trade division method from abroad, the dynamic panel model is employed in this study to empirically analyze the relationship between trade partners and the change of China’s total factor productivity (TFP). The results show that: (1) not all types of trade growth could bring about the technology spillover effect and learning effect, among which E2P and NI2P fail to improve TFP, which is closely related to China’s extensive growth mode of foreign trade and economic development; (2) developed trade partners fail to drive the technical progress completely, and the segmented E2P and NI2P have a significant negative effect on China’ s TFP; and (3) NI2E with non-developed trade partners has a positive effect on China’s TFP growth.
Based on the simulation results of the GTAP model, this paper first examines what are the feasible paths to lead to the multilateral free trade (MFT) between China, Japan and South Korea, and then considers TPP's potential impacts on the feasible paths of China-Japan–South Korea FTA in a dynamic game model. The main conclusions are as follows: the establishment of TPP will exert negative influences on China's economy, and the negative influence will expand with the increase of TPP numbers. Although TPP will have some impacts on the feasible paths of China-Japan–South Korea FTA, it will only restrict the paths, not block them. Whether TPP is established smoothly or not, China, Japan and South Korea can always achieve multilateral free trade through hub-and-spoke free trade agreements.
Since 1994, one of the most significant phenomena accompanied with China's persistent trade imbalance is the fiscal expenditure bias. A large number of expenditure on productive public goods provides huge subsidies to enterprises, increasing the proportion of enterprises in the distribution of social total output, which leads enterprises to strengthen the saving and investment tendency. The relative decline in the income of residents and the insufficient government expenditure on non–productive public goods make the consumption capacity of residents limited and it is difficult to reduce the saving ratio. The whole society's huge savings, with the constraints of the financial market, find it difficult to be completely translated into domestic investment and consumption. Therefore, a large number of domestic excess savings can only be balanced in the form of net exports of goods and services, which leads to the foreign trade imbalance of China accordingly. The further econometric analysis proves the above theoretical hypothesis, that is, fiscal expenditure bias and financial constraints are the important factors causing China's foreign trade imbalance. Therefore, in the process of implementing a more balanced development strategy of import and export trade, China should pay more attention to the important roles of the financial expenditure structure and financial market deepening.
This paper uses the non-parametric functional coefficient model to investigate the influencing factors of RMB exchange rate appreciation against major currencies for a long time by taking into account the institutional factors. The appreciation of RMB can be explained by the persistent expectation and realization of expectation. The empirical results show that the persistent expectation is the most important determinant of RMB appreciation. However, as the exchange rate is becoming flexible, this factor becomes less important. In contrast, as the capital flow is becoming free, the appreciation expectation is more likely to be realized.
Labor is one of the key factors for foreign direct investment absorbing. This paper taking China as a research object, examines the features of labor cost advantage and labor quality to absorb FDI from two levels of labor evaluation, i.e., unit labor cost and human capital. The major findings show that there is threshold effect either in the whole country or in the coastal and inland areas of China. At the same time, the threshold in the coastal area is lower than that in the inland area, which means that labor cost advantage is much more easily lost in the coastal area. The paper also finds that there is structure effect between human capital and FDI, i.e., different kinds of human capital have different outcomes of absorbing FDI. At last, the paper gives some counter measures according to these findings.
