进口贸易自由化能促进地区经济高质量发展吗?——基于中国地级市面板数据的实证研究

Can Import Trade Liberalization Promote the High-quality Development of Regional Economy?-Empirical Research Based on Panel Data of Prefecture-level Cities in China

高质量发展是当前及未来一段时期我国宏观调控的根本要求。通过绿色发展、人民生活、创新能力、经济活力、协调发展五个维度构建了经济高质量发展评价指标体系,测算了2003-2018年中国266个地级市的经济发展质量指数,在此基础上,采用固定效应模型和系统GMM方法考察了进口贸易自由化对经济高质量发展的影响。结果表明:进口关税的下降极大地促进了地区经济高质量发展,其内在作用机制主要体现为技术扩散效应和资源配置效应。对自变量和因变量再度量的稳健性检验和内生性检验显示上述观点依然成立。异质性分析发现,贸易自由化对东部及中部地区、经济高质量发展指数处于50%分位数以下地区的质量提升效应更加显著。高质量是新时代中国经济发展的主旋律,研究结论为进口贸易自由化和高质量发展的持续有效推进提供了重要的理论支持。

High-quality development is the fundamental requirement of China's macro-control at present and in the future.Based on the five dimensions of green development,people's living,innovation ability,economic vitality,and coordinated development,a high-quality economic development evaluation index system was constructed,and the economic development quality index of 266 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2018 was calculated.On this basis,the fixed-effect model and system GMM method are used to investigate the impact of trade liberalization on high-quality regional economic development.The results show that the decline of import tariff has greatly promoted the high-quality development of the regional economy,and its internal mechanism is mainly reflected in the effect of technology diffusion and resource allocation.Robustness tests on the remeasurement of independent and dependent variables and endogenous test show that the above conclusions are still valid.Heterogeneity analyses find that trade liberalization has a more significant quality improvement effect on the eastern and central regions,and regions with high-quality economic development indexes below 50%quantile.High quality is the main theme of China’s economic development in the new era.The research in this article provides important theoretical support for the continuous and effective promotion of import trade liberalization and high quality development.