Archive
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2019 Volume 42 Issue 10
Published: 10 October 2019
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2019, 42(10): 3-22.This paper builds an index to measure trade power, equivalent to multiplying its trading share by a price factor obtained from a comparison between the country's trading price and the global average trading price, so as to measure the country's relative gains from trade.The essential feature of trade power is that it can reap more trade benefits from international trade than other countries.This index also captures another important characteristic of powerful trading nations:that the process of transitioning from a large trading nation to a powerful trading nation largely depends on moving from exporting low-priced products to exporting high-quality, high-priced products.The deconstruction and subsequent analysis of the index are very useful for understanding the sources of countries' trade interests, their status within international trade, and a country's development trajectory to become a powerful trading nation.The index also provides a new perspective for the analysis of the trading structure.
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2019, 42(10): 23-48.Combining data on HS 6-digit commercial products from UN Comtrade and value-added trade data from OECD TiVA during the period of 1996 to 2016, this study investigates changes in trade competitiveness at the national, industrial and product levels across four countries:China, Germany, Japan and the United States.Statistical results first reveal that China's overall trade competitiveness index has already surpassed that of Japan and Germany, but, from an export and import perspective, by 2016 it still lagged behind the US index; second, the increase in China's trade competitiveness index is mainly attributed to the rapid expansion of the market share of exports and imports, while the upgrading of the relative price advantage of German and Japanese trade products in promoting trade competitiveness is prevalent; and third, China's export product quality upgrading is significantly greater than that of the export products produced by the other three developed countries, however, there is no substantial upgrading trend in the competitiveness of China's import products.
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2019, 42(10): 49-72.This paper theoretically clarifies the specific influential path between economic uncertainty and the effectiveness of monetary policy, regards China's stock market volatility and the EPU index as measures of economic uncertainty, constructs the two factors of economic output and price level to measure the policy's effects, inspects the effectiveness of monetary policy under two cases of high and low degree of uncertainty, and compares the differences before and after the financial crisis.The results show:economic uncertainty will only affect the monetary policy tools' effect quantitatively, and will not change their roles in the direction; economic uncertainty will weaken the policy's effectiveness; the weakening degree mentioned above has become more evident after the financial crisis.This study is of great value for the central bank to avoid the policy passivity under serious economic fluctuations and enhance the accuracy as well as the effectiveness of decision making.
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2019, 42(10): 73-97.This paper treats R&D investment as capital rather than intermediate inputs, redefining the concept of the contribution rate of scientific and technological progress and undertaking its estimation.Using data at the national and provincial levels from between 1990 and 2017, it is found that:(1) while economic growth in China mainly comes from capital investment and scientific and technological progress, the annual contribution rate of scientific and technological progress to national economic growth has reached 48.97%, making it one of the most important sources of power for China's economic growth; (2) since the global financial crisis of 2008, the contribution rate of R&D capital deepening to China's economic growth has increased considerably, but the rapid decline in the total factor productivity (TFP) is the prime reason for the lower contribution rate of scientific and technological progress and the economic recession of recent years; and (3) since 2013, TFP in most of the eastern provinces, such as Shanghai, Zhejiang and Jiangsu, has bottomed out and then started to pick up again, however, other areas, such as Liaoning, Xinjiang and Shanxi, which have heavy chemical and resource-intensive industries, have experienced a severe decline, with some even reaching negative values.Therefore, accelerating the reversal of the TFP decline in heavy chemical and resource-intensive industrial areas is crucial to improving the contribution rate of China's scientific and technological progress and thus curbing economic growth decline.
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2019, 42(10): 98-119.This paper analyses the characteristics of industrial policies issued by central and local governments from the perspective of comparative advantage. It is found that key industries selected by the central government present or can cultivate local comparative advantages in the eastern region, but not in the central or western regions. At the same time, among the key industries supported by the local governments, especially in the central and western regions, the proportion of central key industries is getting higher and higher, which leads to the key industries of the central and western regions increasingly deviating from their comparative advantages.It is further found that this type of deviation is positively correlated with the possibility of approval of state economic development zones in local areas, providing a further clue in understanding why local governments follow central key industries at the cost of deviating from their comparative advantages.
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The Constraint of Local Economic Growth Target and Manufacturing Export Technological Sophistication2019, 42(10): 120-142.This paper takes the economic growth target data of 230 cities and prefectures in China between 2004 and 2013 as a sample to examine the impact of dual constraints on the establishment of economic growth targets on manufacturing export technological sophistication. The study shows that the use of "hard language" and a higher degree of "unrestricted raising" in setting local economic growth targets is not conducive to the improvement of manufacturing export technological sophistication, and regional manufacturing export technological sophistication with an "ample" adequate growth target is relatively higher. Local economic growth target constraints mainly affect local governments' behaviour with respect to investment promotion, which translates into a deepening of the "jamming effect" on regional innovation activities and the "path dependency" on labour and capital-intensive industries, which in turn hinders increases in manufacturing export technological sophistication. The conclusions of this paper are of great significance to the management of regional economic growth targets and the promotion of high-quality development of manufacturing.
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2019, 42(10): 143-168.This paper uses 2002, 2007 and 2010 interregional input-output tables for China to discuss the spillover effects of economic growth in the NVC linked labour division network with regional-industrial dimensions, further deconstructing this spillover effect into three types of embodiment mechanisms, from static and dynamic dimensions, based on the "smile curve" theory, specifically the pre-manufacturing stages' forward spillover, the post-manufacturing stages' backward spillover and the pre- and post-manufacturing stages' catching-up and competition effect, then analysing the effect of the marketization degree on NVC spillover. The results reveal that:China's economic growth produces significant spillover effects through the NVC linked labour division network, and this spillover effect is mainly caused by the backward spillover effect. The asymmetric structure of NVC "upstream monopolistic-segmentation and downstream competition-opening" accompanied by the gradual reform of the product market prior and the factor market later is a potential reason for this. At the same time, a higher degree of marketization can improve the effective use of NVC's three spillover mechanisms, thereby amplifying the economic growth spillover effects through the NVC linked labour division network.
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2019, 42(10): 169-192.Taking the data of Chinese listed A-share firms between 2007 and 2015 as the research sample, this paper tests the influence of firms' innovation on the risk of default through theoretical models and empirical data. The research findings indicate that there is a clear U-shaped relationship between them, i.e. improving innovation input helps reduce the risk of default before reaching a certain threshold, but after this threshold is exceeded, the risk of default increases with increased investment in innovation. Further considering the characteristics of firms, when innovation inputs are converted into higher expected returns and lead to lower firm value fluctuations, innovation investments present a stronger inhibitory effect on the risk of default. The research in this paper confirms dual innovation mechanism on the risk of default.
