中国贸易量增长之谜的微观经济分析：1978-2007

Microeconomic Analysis of the Mystery of China’s Trade Volume Growth: 1978-2007

国际贸易领域的学者在解释一国商品特别是制成品进出口贸易量增长时,倾向于使用引力模型,但就中国来讲,该模型中的汇率、关税、运输成本和地理距离等变量的解释力度是有限的,不足以揭示中国贸易量增长之谜。事实上,中国贸易量的增长,源于经济全球化进程中的生产非一体化,源于跨国公司对其制造工序、环节的垂直外包,源于中国企业适时调整和参与国际产品内分工的策略。构建跨国公司主导的产品内分工均衡模型,利用贸易的技术条件、经济体的相似程度、贸易的政策条件、生产非一体化程度和人均资本装配水平等变量对中国贸易量增长进行计量检验,其结果支持上述基本判断。

The 'gravity equation' is usually adopted by international trade researchers in explaining the growth of a country’s import and export trade volume of goods, especially manufactured goods. But in the case of China, variables in this model such as exchange rate, tariff, cost of transportation, and spatial distance are not sufficient to explain the mystery of China’s trade volume growth. In reality, this growth of China’s trade volume is owing to disintegration of production in the process of economic globalization, MNCs’ vertical outsourcing of their manufacturing processes and procedures, and the timely readjustment of Chinese enterprises and their strategy of participating in international intra-product specialization. In this paper we establish an equilibrium model of intra-product specialization dominated by MNCs, and perform some empirical tests of China’s trade volume growth using variables including technological conditions of trade, extent of similarity of economies, policy conditions of trade, extent of disintegration of production and level of per capita capital equipment; the empirical results support our basic conclusions.