跨境电商与中国出口新增长——基于信息成本和规模经济的双重视角

Cross-border E-commerce and New Export Growth in China: Based on the Dual Perspective of Information Costs and Economies of Scale

跨境电商作为一种贸易新业态,正广泛而深刻地影响全球贸易格局,中国跨境电商产业的发展在世界范围内处于领先地位。本文使用双重差分法定量分析中国跨境电商产业政策对出口的总体性和结构性影响,并探讨其中的作用机制。研究表明,2012年后各项跨境电商产业政策的实施使得中国相关类别出口增长约4%-9%。通过对贸易流的结构性分解,发现跨境电商产业政策能够促进出口沿着扩展边际和集约边际实现增长,对扩展边际的作用更加显著,对集约边际的作用略显滞后。进一步的作用机制分析发现,跨境电商的发展,一方面降低信息成本,促进出口在扩展边际上的增长;另一方面强化规模经济,促进出口在集约边际上的增长。本文为理解跨境电商对国际贸易的影响提供新的视角,为发展贸易新业态推动贸易强国建设提供经验证据支撑。

As a combination of international trade and information and communication technology(ICT),cross-border e-commerce is accelerating the transformation of international trade.More and more trade procedures are being moved online.In recent years,China’s export growth has slowed down,and traditional international competitive advantages have gradually weakened.In this context,cross-border e-commerce has gradually become a new driving force for China’s international trade growth and is of great significance to build the new pattern of comprehensive opening up.The rapid development of China’s cross-border e-commerce industry is inseparable from the government’s policy support.Since the year of 2012,the State Council,the Ministry of Commerce,the Ministry of Finance,and the General Administration of Customs have issued lots of cross-border e-commerce related policies.These policies ensure the healthy and sustainable development of cross-border e-commerce in China by standardizing the behaviors of cross-border e-commerce entities,providing convenient customs clearance measures,and reducing tariffs.How much can cross-border e-commerce promote export?What is the mechanism of the promotion?How to develop more targeted policies?This article attempts to answer these questions.To be more specific,this article employs the difference-in-differences(DID)method to analyze the impact of cross-border e-commerce on export.On the one hand,this article regards 2012 as the year when the cross-border e-commerce industrial policy began to be implemented after analyzing a large number of documents.On the other hand,this article identifies the product categories that are traded on cross-border e-commerce platforms as the treated group.The empirical results show that the development of cross-border e-commerce has increased the export of related product categories by about 4%to 9%.This finding is robust to a variety of tests including parallel trend tests and placebo tests.Through the structural decomposition of trade flows,the cross-border e-commerce industrial policy is found to promote the growth of export at both the extensive margin and the intensive margin.The effect on the extensive margin is more obvious in the early stage and the effect on the intensive margin becomes more significant in the later period.The further mechanism analysis suggests that the development of cross-border e-commerce weakens the effect of information costs,thereby promoting the growth of export at the extensive margin;the development of cross-border e-commerce strengthens the effect of the economies of scale,thereby promoting the growth of exports at the intensive margin.This article has the following policy implications.First,the government should continue to introduce policies to promote the development of cross-border e-commerce in the future,including increase the level of trade liberalization,reduce various trade barriers,and provide more support for firms in customs clearance,financing,and taxation.Second,the focus of the cross-border e-commerce industrial policy should shift to supporting cross-border e-commerce companies to grow bigger and stronger,and to giving more play to the role of cross-border e-commerce in driving export growth.Third,the international community should carry out more consultations on e-commerce rules and create a globally unified online market system so that countries around the world,especially developing countries,can share the dividends of the development of the digital economy.Compared with the existing research,the marginal contributions of this article are as follows.On the one hand,although there is currently a lot of research on the impact of e-commerce on international trade,this article uses the DID method for the first time to quantitatively evaluate the export promotion effect of the cross-border e-commerce industrial policy.On the other hand,the existing literature mainly analyzes the impact of ICT on international trade from the perspective of information costs.This article discusses the extensive margin and the intensive margin of export from the dual perspectives of information costs and economies of scale and provides empirical evidence to support it.