贸易开放、地区市场规模与中国省际通胀波动

On the Trade Openness,Regional Market Size and the Provincial Inflation Volatility in China

利用1976～2010年我国内地28个省份的面板数据,本文实证考察了我国各省的贸易开放和地区市场规模对我国省际通货膨胀波动性的影响。我们根据新经济地理学中的市场潜力理论构造了地区市场规模指标,并通过多重工具变量两阶段最小二乘回归法有效处理了贸易开放的内生性问题。研究结果表明,地区市场规模扩大产生的竞争效应缓解了省际通胀波动;而贸易开放将各省置于外部冲击之下,从而放大了省际通胀波动。多个稳健性分析表明我们的实证结论具有较好的稳健性。

Using provincial panel data of China from 1976 to 2010, this paper empirically studies the effect of international trade openness and regional market size on inflation volatility at provincial level. We construct a regional market size index based on the theory of market potential from the New Economic Geography, and apply multiple IV method to deal effectively with the endogeneity problem of international trade openness. As our study shows, the competition effect induced by the expansion of regional market size helps alleviating provincial inflation volatility, while international trade openness exposes provinces to more external shocks and thus leads to more inflation volatility. This finding is consistent under several robustness tests.