Chinese Trade Reforms, Market Access and Foreign Competition : The Patterns of French Exporters

A unilateral trade reform generates two opposite effects: market access expansion and strengthening of competitive pressures in the liberalized market. Using detailed trade and firm-level data from France, we investigate how French firms' product scope and export sales changed after Chinese lib...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bas, Maria, Bombarda, Pamela
Format: Journal Article
Language:en_US
Published: Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank 2014
Subjects:
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/10986/19087
Description
Summary:A unilateral trade reform generates two opposite effects: market access expansion and strengthening of competitive pressures in the liberalized market. Using detailed trade and firm-level data from France, we investigate how French firms' product scope and export sales changed after Chinese liberalization vis-à-vis Asian liberalization. Our findings suggest that lower Chinese import tariffs account on average for 7 percent of the new products exported by French firms, and for 18 percent of additional French export sales. These results are robust when accounting for foreign competition faced by French firms in the liberalized market.