关键词: 技术性贸易壁垒, 中间品进口, 全要素生产率, 加工贸易, 异质性企业

Abstract: China’s imports under processing trade are exempt from tariffs but not from non-tariff barriers. With the deep adjustment and transformation of international industrial division, the development of global value chain trade has promoted rapid growth of intermediate products trade, which increases the impact of non-tariff barriers on the processing trade firms. Statistical results show that China’s technical barriers to trade (TBT) are mainly in textile and clothing, chemical fiber, machine, electromechanical and communication equipment manufacturing industries that are labor-intensive and have significant differences in TBT. By matching the data of TBT in China, industrial firms, and customs imports, this article empirically explores the impact of TBT of intermediate product imports in Chinese processing trade firms on the total factor productivity (TFP) of China’s firms. Results show a significant positive role of China’s TBT on the productivity of its processing trade firms via improving the quality, volume and origin structure of imported inputs, and this promoting effect of TBT on productivity is greater for large firms, foreign firms, the firms with high capital, low pollution or located in the eastern areas. Moreover, the decline in firms’ share of assembly processing enhances the productivity promotion effect. Our findings enrich the evidence on the influence of import trade policy on the performance of processing trade firms.

Key words: Technical Barriers to Trade, Intermediate Input Imports, Total Factor Productivity, Processing Trade, Heterogeneous Firms