贸易开放、城市制度改进与经济增长

Foreign trade,improvement of urban institutions and economic growth

'以开放促改革,以改革谋发展'是中国推进开放的一个重要依据,然而鲜有文献专门考察贸易通过制度渠道对经济增长的影响,本文以中国各城市为对象对这一问题进行了研究。本文首先构造城市出口制度密集度指标以衡量世界市场对城市的制度需求,接着本文利用多元回归模型和中介效应模型实证检验出口制度密集度对城市经济增长的影响及其机制。实证结果表明,城市对外贸易带来的外部制度需求会通过促使城市制度改进来促进城市经济增长,并且,本土公司的一般贸易在贸易通过制度渠道促进城市经济增长的过程中起着主要作用。

In reality,China’s reform and opening up since 1978 has achieved tremendous economic growth.Reform and open up,as it were,is the face of positive and negative of a coin,they never is the organic unity and inseparable,increasing the level of opening to the outside world in China,almost every time of opening wider to the outside are accompanied by corresponding reform of domestic institutions,'promoting reform through opening-up and seeking development through reform'is an important basis for China’s opening-up policy and an important success experience of making economic policy.However,there is a lack of quantitative research on exactly how openness has promoted domestic institutional reform and how much impact this reform has had on economic growth.Trade is an important aspect of opening to the outside world.So,can trade improve domestic institutions?If can,by what mechanism?Furthermore,can trade drive economic growth through institutional improvements?These are questions worth studying.In the literature,no institutional channels have been involved in the investigation of the mechanism of trade promoting economic growth.At the same time,studies in recent years show that trade will promote domestic institutional reform through external institutional demand,generating new trade interest class,nested institutional reforming and so on.Based on the above facts and literature,it is easy to think of the question that whether trade will have an impact on economic growth through institutional channels and,more specifically,whether trade will promote economic growth by promoting domestic institutional reform.From the perspective of external institutional demand,based on the data and samples of China’s prefecture-level cities,this paper studies how trade promotes urban economic growth by promoting urban institutional improvement.The investigation of this issue helps us to deepen our understanding of the significance of trading.Moreover,this paper also obtains the understanding of the differences in the role of different trade patterns in the process of trade affecting economic growth through institutional channels.In the second section,two hypotheses are proposed.Hypothesis 1:the external institutional demand generated by cities’foreign trade will promote economic growth by promoting urban institutional improvement.Hypothesis 2:general trade of domestic companies plays a major role in promoting urban economic growth through institutional channels.Hypothesis 1 is proposed basing on two categories of literature:the first category of literature is about that trade will influence domestic institutions through external institutional demand;the second category of literature is about that there is a close relationship between institutions and economic growth.Hypothesis 2 is proposed basing on some characteristics of domestic companies’general trade activities:China’s trade activity mainly consists of general trade and processing trade which are dominated by foreign enterprises,and for the most part these foreign companies are located in export processing zones and other special policy areas,so their trading activities’impact on domestic institutions is limited to these particular policy area whose institutions was better,hence the effects of the improved due to the trade is very limited,so the impact on the overall economic growth can also be very limited;while general trade is mainly carried out by local companies,which are distributed all over the country.The economic benefits brought by trade will encourage them to drive the improvement of local institutions,and such extensive institutional improvement will further promote local economic development.Hypothesis 1 means that how to measure the external institutional demand generated by trade becomes a key point of this study.Therefore,this paper constructs the index of institutional intensity of city exports,which is the weighted average institutional content of all export products of a city.The institutional intensity of city exports measures the institutional demand for a city from the world market.We find that institutional intensity of city exports has important economic implications:it is closely related to per capita income and urban institutions--cities with high exporting institutional intensity are more likely to have higher per capita income and higher level of urban institutions.The third section is the empirical part of this paper.We first use multiple regression model to empirically analyze the impact of exporting institutional intensity on urban economic growth,the empirical results show that holding on other factors unchanged,if the exporting institutional intensity of local companies general trade in initial year increased by 10%,then real GDP growth rate in next three years is expected to increase by an annual rate of 2.2%;while the coefficients of the other three trade modes(general trade of foreign companies,processing trade of local companies,and processing trade of foreign companies)are not significant.Therefore,the exporting institutional intensity of general trade,especially of local companies’general trade,will promote urban economic growth;the exporting institutional intensity of other trade modes has no obvious influence on urban economic growth.Then,we use the mediation effect model to test mechanism of exporting institutional intensity promoting urban economic growth,founding that the external institutional demand generated by cities’foreign trade(that is,the exporting institutional intensity)would promote urban economic growth by promoting the improvement of urban institutions.Moreover,it is domestic companies’general trade who play a major role in the process.The research of this paper shows the rationality of the strategy of'promoting reform through opening up and seeking development through reform',so the significance of opening up is more prominent.At present,the construction of pilot free trade zones in various parts of China is an important attempt to promote deeper opening up,which would promote deeper institutional reform and thus provide a good institutional environment for sustained economic growth.At the same time,according to the analysis of this article,the general trade,especially the local companies’general trade plays a more important role than other trade patterns in the process of trade affecting economic growth through institutional channels,therefore,vigorously implement the powering the country by powering manufactures strategy of'Mading in China 2025',accelerate the upgrading of industrial structure,cultivate a number of domestic enterprises with high-end brands and core competitiveness,promote the growth of general trade,especially the growth of local companies’general trade,should become an important consideration in future policy making.