多米诺效应、空间不平衡性与区域贸易集团稳定性——简析英国脱欧的原因及对中国的启示

The Domino Effect, Space Imbalance and Stability for the Free-Trade Zone——A Brief Analysis of the Reasons for the Britain Exiting from EU and Its Enlightenment to China

文章基于新经济地理学自由资本模型,将比较优势、要素禀赋和资本所得税等因素纳入进来,建立起多国自由贸易模型,并通过严谨的数理与实证分析揭示了区域贸易集团的运行机理。研究发现:(1)区域贸易集团成立会对非成员国利益产生损害,区域外国家会积极加入这种贸易集团,区域贸易集团成立的多米诺效应会促使其成员数量不断增加;(2)随着一体化水平的提高,区域贸易集团内部处于劣势地位的成员国会被边缘化,这将导致区域贸易集团内部的空间不平衡性,最终影响其稳定性,而成员国间可以通过转移支付政策和差异化开放政策等来维护其稳定性;(3)英国脱欧的根本原因在于欧盟深度一体化加剧了各国的空间不平衡性,英国脱欧的背后考量很可能是为了逃避对欧责任,但英国通过脱欧来维护其自身利益的选择并非最佳选择。文章研究结论对中国参与区域经济合作具有指导意义,我国要积极加入或建立各种层面的区域贸易集团,同时还应预见到其所具有的空间不平衡性和不稳定性问题,因此在与强国谈判时,应避免与其过度一体化;而与弱国谈判时,则应与其保持适度一体化。

Summary： This research is setting up a free-trade zone model between multi-countries, which is based on the Footloose Capital Model in the New Economic Geography Theory, including comparative advantages, factor endowment and capital income tax, and gets conclusions by strict mathematical and empirical analyses. From the research we find that： （ 1 ） The establishment of the free-trade zone will have damage to external countries, then these countries have motivation to enter into the free-trade zone, which illustrates the establish- ment of the free-trade zone has the ＂domino effect＂; （2）As the level of integration increasing, the member country who is at a disadvantage position will be marginalized, which will lead to a spatial imbalance inner free-trade zone, and then will affect the stability of the free-trade zone, while members can sustain the stability by transfer payments and differentiated opening policies; （3）The root cause of Britain＇s departure from Europe is the spatial imbalance caused by the deep integration of EU, and the Britain exiting from EU has its consideration to avoid taking responsibility to EU, but for Britain, maybe it is not the best choice to exit from EU for self-interest maintaining. The conclusions of this paper are of great significance to the development of China＇s regional cooperation. According to the conclusions of the paper, China should not only actively parti- cipate in or establish regional trade groups at all levels, but also foresee their spatial imbalance and instability. However, in view of the complexity of inter-country transfer payments and the lesson of Britain＇s departure from Europe, we should adopt differentiated opening policies with the outside world as much as possible to re- solve the instability of regional trade groups. When negotiating with powerful countries, we should avoid ex- cessive integration with them; while negotiating with weak countries, we should maintain appropriate integra- tion with them. In this way, we can not only gain the benefits of integration, but also avoid the negative effects caused by over integration. This article reveals the operational mechanism of regional trade blocs, and provides a theoretical support for China＇s regional economic cooperation strategies. Besides, the multi-country FTA model established in this paper can be easily extended. Therefore, it has high theoretical values and applica- tion values.