国际贸易地理研究进展

A review on geographies of international trade

全球化时代的技术进步和贸易自由化似乎逐渐将世界经济连为一体,但研究发现国际贸易仍然显著地受到地理因素影响。与此同时,经济地理学对国际贸易地理的理论建构存在欠缺,其对国际贸易研究的贡献目前集中于对国际贸易地理格局和贸易网络异质性的描述分析上。在此背景下,论文从生产、流通和消费3个方面归纳国际贸易研究对地理因素作用的理论建构和实证研究:①生产上的地理差异经由机会成本差异促进贸易;②流通上的地理差异经由贸易成本而抑制贸易;③消费上的地理差异经由市场需求地空间差异而影响贸易。通过总结贸易与制度变迁、贸易与集聚、贸易与不平等、贸易与创新、贸易与污染间的关系相关研究,论文认为当前国际贸易研究存在如下局限:①并未深入讨论地理变量的内生性,即贸易可能反过来塑造地理差异而非仅由地理变量决定;②相对缺乏多尺度、跨尺度视角,即贸易理论预测的宏观尺度贸易利得在中观、微观主体上并非均等分配,表现出显著的空间差异;③部分研究对产品异质性缺乏探讨,无法全面刻画贸易的差异化地理效应。据此,经济地理学未来对国际贸易研究的贡献可能在于运用多尺度、跨尺度联系的视角深入阐释贸易与地理的多维度异质性和复杂互动。

It is expected that the world economy would be gradually integrated and interconnected by trade liberalization and progress in technology in globalization era. However, researchers have found that international trade remains significantly affected by geographies. At the same time, economic geographers put little effort on building theories about geographies of international trade and their main contribution in this field is confined to descriptive analysis on the heterogeneous patterns and network structures of international trade. In this article,how geographies affect trade in international economic studies is reviewed from three dimensions—production,circulation, and consumption. Differences on production side promote trade through the intermediation of opportunity cost while differences in circulation process hinder trade by increasing trade cost. Differences on consumption side affect trade through the intermediation of demand level. By summarizing the literature on the relationship between trade and institutional change, trade and urban agglomeration, trade and inequality, trade and innovation, and trade and pollution, we identify three major limitations of these studies. First, few studies dig into the endogeneity of geography systematically. Spatial disparity can be shaped by international trade rather than only determining international trade. Second, there is a dearth of multi-scale and inter-scale perspective despite that gains from trade at the macro level predicted by traditional trade theory are found not evenly distributed at the meso and micro levels, resulting in evident spatial disparity. Third, some of the studies do not fully explore product heterogeneity, thus cannot completely capture the various spatial impacts of trade. Therefore, possible contribution of economic geographers to international trade studies lies in thorough investigation on multi-dimensional heterogeneity and complex interactions between geographies and international trade from multi-scale and inter-scale perspective.