人员跨境流动、“软信息”与国际贸易

Cross-Border Travel,“Soft Information”and International Trade

本文聚焦人员跨境流动的经济效应探讨人员跨境流动如何通过“软信息”传递促进中国进口贸易发展。在识别策略方面,我们以免签入境政策作为可验证的准自然实验,采用倍差法识别人员跨境流动对中国进口贸易的促进作用。研究结果表明:人员跨境流动便利化使企业进口沿着扩展边际实现增长,在产品侧促进一般贸易、高技术产品与资本品贸易;作用机制是“软信息”流动引致信息成本下降,具体表现为降低搜寻成本以筛选高质量贸易关系,降低信任成本使贸易效应动态持续扩大;且现代信息通讯技术的发展、人员境内流动便利化的互补性有助于该作用。本研究意味着“软信息”是数字经济时代的重要资源,人员流动在高质量开放发展中发挥着重要作用。

This paper focuses on the research field of the economic effect of cross-border travel,and specifically discusses how cross-border travel promotes the development of Chinese import trade through the transmission of“soft information”.Taking Chinese visa-free-entry policy as a verifiable quasi-natural experiment,we use difference-in-differences(DID)to identify the impact of cross-border travel on Chinese goods import.We find the facilitation of cross-border travel increases the enterprises’import value along the expansion margin,and promotes general trade,high-tech products and capital goods trade.This mechanism is the decline of information cost due to“soft information”flow,which reduces search cost to screen high-quality partnerships and trust cost to continuously expand the positive trade effect.Further,this impact is benefit from the complementarity of the modern information and communication technology,and the domestic travel facilitation.The conclusion of this paper means that“soft information”is an important resource in the digital economy era,and the flow of people plays an vital role in the development of high-quality openness.