Trade policy uncertainty and exports: Evidence from China's WTO accession

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Feng, Ling; Li, Zhiyuan; Swenson, Deborah L.
• 署名单位: Shanghai University of Finance & Economics; Fudan University; Fudan University; University of California System; University of California Davis
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2016.12.009
• 发表日期: 2017
• 页码: 20-36
• 关键词: Trade policy uncertainty; firm dynamics; Export reallocation

摘要

This paper studies how reduction in trade policy uncertainty affects firm export decisions. Using a firm-product level dataset on Chinese exports to the United States and the European Union in the years surrounding China's WTO accession, we provide strong evidence that reduction in trade policy uncertainty simultaneously induced firm entries to and firm exits from export activity within fine product-level markets. In addition, we uncover accompanying changes in export product prices and quality that coincided with this-reallocation: firms that provided higher quality products at lower prices entered the export market, while firms that had higher prices and provided lower quality products prior to the changes, exited. To explain the simultaneous export entries and exits, as well as the fact that new entrants are more productive than exiters, we provide a model of heterogeneous firms which incorporates trade policy uncertainty, tracing the effects of the changes in policy uncertainty on firm-level payoffs and the resulting selection effects. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.