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贸易自由化、契约环境与全要素生产率

Trade Liberalization,Contractual Environment and Total Factor Productivity

【作者】 刘斌

【导师】 朱彤;

【作者基本信息】 南开大学 , 国际贸易学, 2013, 博士

【摘要】 新古典主义所奉行的自由贸易准则是世界贸易体系的基石,市场化改革依然是中国前进的方向,这些“真谛”都没有改变。近年来,制度经济学家和新新贸易理论强调了契约的重要性,为当今学者们对国际经济学和制度经济学相关性的研究提供了新的视角。国际经济学的一个重要的研究方向是如何使贸易自由化所产生的经济效益最大化,而制度经济分析的作用在于使人们认识到在现实生活中预定目标可能无法实现的障碍,从而在制度和规则内进行改进,以克服市场化(包括贸易自由化)进程中的阻力,进而更好地实现经济效益的最大化。本文所研究的问题即是贸易自由化经济效益的制度障碍。中国特有的经济与制度现状为中国学者检验契约实施对经济绩效的影响提供了一个天然的试验场。改革开放的三十年中,在微观领域,我国的企业规模在不断扩大,经济效益不断提高,企业全要素生产率以年均约4%的速度提升。与此密切相关的事实是:2001年加入世界贸易组织以来,我国关税水平大幅降低,非关税壁垒如配额、进口许可证等也大为减少,中国正在以更为“开放”的姿态融入全球经济。但与经济发展不相适应的是,现有法律体系尚不完善,不同地区在地理、文化与经济发展水平以及执政能力等方面的差距导致了我国在契约完善程度方面存在明显的地区差异。总之,当前中国不断深入的对外经济开放与滞后的制度环境并存,总体企业生产率的提高与地区间(或行业间)生产率差距并存。中国特有的经济与制度现状为本文研究贸易自由化、契约环境和企业生产率相关关系提供了理论上的启发。贸易自由化对企业生产率的作用机制会受到契约环境的影响和制约。贸易自由化虽然降低了中间投入品的关税和使用成本,扩大了企业可得中间投入品的范围,但只有在那些具有健全法律制度的地区,企业才能够更好地签署合约,进而“更快”和“更好”地取得中间投入品,进而提升企业的生产率,从贸易自由化中获利。本文在此基础之上建立相应的计量模型。首先,本文借鉴Nunn (2007)、Reshad Nazir Ahsan (2010)等学者的研究方法,在计量模型中引入贸易自由化和契约环境的交互项,以此检验贸易自由化对企业生产率的作用机制是否会受到契约环境的影响。其次,本文对计量模型所运用的主要指标(贸易自由化、契约环境和企业生产率)的选取和计算进行解释,并对本文所运用的数据来源——中国工业企业数据库进行较为详细的说明。在理论模型和计量模型建立的基础之上,本文对全要素生产率的影响因素进行计量检验,并重点考察贸易自由化、契约环境对全要素生产率的影响。首先,逐步加入控制变量后,同时运用普通最小二乘法和两阶段最小二乘法对基本模型进行计量估计,并运用关税等指标作为贸易自由化的替代指标做进一步的稳健性检验,然后,详细探讨在不同的中间品投入密度情况下,贸易自由化、契约环境对企业全要素生产率的影响,并得出有意义的结论:贸易自由化对企业生产率的作用会受到契约环境的影响,中间品投入密度越高,这一特征表现得越明显。本文的结论具有重要的政策意涵。一方面,从经济效益角度看,贸易自由化和契约环境的改善不仅有利于该地区企业生产率和竞争力的提升,也有利于缩小地区间企业经济效益的整体差距。另一方面,在深层次意义上说,贸易自由化是对外开放的“方式”,契约等制度性环境的优化是改革的“动力”,而企业生产率的提升才是改革开放的“目的”。当前中国的对外“开放”政策需要自身内部“改革”的支持才能更好的发挥经济效益。因此,我们既要坚持对外开放政策不动摇,也要继续稳步推进内部制度改革。

【Abstract】 Free trade criteria pursued by the neo-classical is the cornerstone of the world trading system. Market-oriented reforms are still the way forward for China. These "true essences" has not changed. In recent years, institutional economists and the new-new trade theory emphasizes the importance of the contract, which provides a new perspective for today’s scholars of international economics and institutional economics. An important research direction of international economics is to maximize the economic benefits of trade liberalization, while the role of institutional economics analysis is to make people aware of the obstacles that prevent people from achieving the intended targets in real life, so that we improve the system and the rules to overcome the resistance in the market-oriented process (including trade liberalization), in order to achieve the maximum economic benefit. The focus of this paper is the institutional barriers to the economic benefits of trade liberalization.China’s unique economic system provides a natural testing ground for scholars to inspect the implementation of contract on economic performance. In the microscopic field, the scale of China’s enterprises is expanding continuously, the economic benefits of the enterprise is improving, and the total factor productivity increases at an annual growth rate of4%on average during the three decades of reform and opening up. Closely related to this fact is that since the accession to the World Trade Organization in2001, China’s tariff level has been significantly reduced, non-tariff barriers such as quotas, import license have been greatly reduced, and China is holding a more "open" attitude to integration into the global economy. Incompatible with the economic development, however, the existing legal system is not perfect, and the gap among different regions in geography, culture, economic development level and ruling ability leads to significant regional differences in the degree of contract completeness in our country. In short, the deepening of the economic openness and the lagging institutional environment coexist, the improvement of the overall enterprise productivity and the gap of regional (or inter-industry) productivity coexist. China’s special economic and institutional situation inspired this paper’s theoretical study in the relationship between trade liberalization, contractual environment and enterprise productivity.The mechanism of trade liberalization’s influence on firm productivity may be affected and constrained by contractual environment. Though trade liberalization reduces tariff and expands the range of the use of intermediate inputs, only in those regions with a sound legal system can enterprises successfully sign contracts, and obtain intermediate inputs "faster" and "better", improve the productivity and benefit from trade liberalization. On this basis, this paper establishes the appropriate econometric model. First, on the basis of the research of Nunn(2007), Reshad Nazir Ahsan (2010) and other scholars, this paper introduces interaction term of trade liberalization and contractual environment in order to test whether the mechanism of trade liberalization on firm productivity can be affected by the contractual environment. Secondly, the calculation and selection of key indicators (trade liberalization, contractual environment and enterprise productivity) in econometric models are explained. Additionally Ⅰ carry out a more detailed description about the source of Chinese industrial enterprises database.On the basis of the theoretical and econometric models, this article empirically analyzes influencing factors of the enterprise total factor productivity, and emphasizes the impact of trade liberalization and contractual environment on enterprise’s total factor productivity. First, by gradually adding the control variables, the article makes an econometric estimation of the basic model using ordinary least squares and two-stage least squares. And the article uses tariffs and other indicators as alternative indicators of trade liberalization for further robustness test. Then we investigate in detail the impact of trade liberalization and contractual environment on total factor productivity in different density of intermediate goods and draw meaningful conclusions:the role of trade liberalization on firm productivity will be affected by contractual environment, the higher the inputting density of intermediate goods, the more prominent this characteristic.The conclusion of the paper has some important policy implications. On the one hand, from the economic point of view, trade liberalization and improvement of the contractual environment is not only conducive to enhancing the productivity and competitiveness of companies in the region, but also conducive to narrowing the gap of the overall economic efficiency of enterprises in the region. On the other hand, trade liberalization is, in a deeper sense,"the way" of opening up, the optimization of the contract and institutional environment is the "driving force", and the improvement of enterprises’ productivity is the "purpose" of the reform and opening up. China’s current foreign policy of opening up needs support of its own internal "reform" in order to better achieve the economic benefits. Therefore, we should not only adhere to the external open-door policy, but also continue to steadily promote internal institutional reform.

  • 【网络出版投稿人】 南开大学
  • 【网络出版年期】2014年 07期
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