{"title":"Environmental provisions in preferential trade agreements and export product quality of Chinese firms","authors":"Yajun Zhu , Churen Sun","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2025.102048","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>China’s foreign trade has stepped into a high-quality development track, while at the same time, China has increasingly included different types of environmental provisions in the concluded Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). We empirically examine the effect of environmental provisions in PTAs on firms’ export product quality using matched data from the Trade and Environment Database (TREND), the Chinese Customs Transaction-level Trade Statistics Dataset, and the Chinese Annual Survey of Industrial Firms Dataset from 2000 to 2014. The findings show that environmental provisions in PTAs are conducive to improving the quality of Chinese firms’ export products by increasing firms’ productivity and inducing firms to import more intermediate goods. Furthermore, trade-liberal environmental provisions in PTAs tend to improve the quality of firms’ export products quality while trade-prohibitive ones have a negative effect. Additionally, environmental provisions in PTAs are particularly beneficial for firms that are less constrained by financing, as well as for state-owned, foreign, medium-sized, and high emission intensity firms. Our research provides support for promoting China’s participation in global governance through environmental provisions in PTAs while realizing high-quality development of foreign trade.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":"101 ","pages":"Article 102048"},"PeriodicalIF":3.4000,"publicationDate":"2025-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Asian Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1049007825001721","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
China’s foreign trade has stepped into a high-quality development track, while at the same time, China has increasingly included different types of environmental provisions in the concluded Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs). We empirically examine the effect of environmental provisions in PTAs on firms’ export product quality using matched data from the Trade and Environment Database (TREND), the Chinese Customs Transaction-level Trade Statistics Dataset, and the Chinese Annual Survey of Industrial Firms Dataset from 2000 to 2014. The findings show that environmental provisions in PTAs are conducive to improving the quality of Chinese firms’ export products by increasing firms’ productivity and inducing firms to import more intermediate goods. Furthermore, trade-liberal environmental provisions in PTAs tend to improve the quality of firms’ export products quality while trade-prohibitive ones have a negative effect. Additionally, environmental provisions in PTAs are particularly beneficial for firms that are less constrained by financing, as well as for state-owned, foreign, medium-sized, and high emission intensity firms. Our research provides support for promoting China’s participation in global governance through environmental provisions in PTAs while realizing high-quality development of foreign trade.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Asian Economics provides a forum for publication of increasingly growing research in Asian economic studies and a unique forum for continental Asian economic studies with focus on (i) special studies in adaptive innovation paradigms in Asian economic regimes, (ii) studies relative to unique dimensions of Asian economic development paradigm, as they are investigated by researchers, (iii) comparative studies of development paradigms in other developing continents, Latin America and Africa, (iv) the emerging new pattern of comparative advantages between Asian countries and the United States and North America.