新经济地理学（NEG）作为分析企业和人口空间集聚的重要理论,主要聚焦空间集聚、市场规模、产品种类和运输成本等。然而,关于这些因素是如何影响地区产品质量改进的研究并不多。本文以高质量发展下“一带一路”倡议为背景,以自由资本模型（FC）为基础,在消费效用和生产成本两端均引入质量,在DCI框架下建立两区域空间经济模型,并在非对称结构下对运输成本、替代弹性、市场规模等产品质量的影响因素进行数值模拟,讨论我国和“一带一路”沿线国家产品质量的变化。结果表明,即便不存在对外投资,降低沿线运输成本、实现自由贸易也有利于“一带一路”沿线国家产品质量的提高;如果资本能够自由流动,存在对外投资,则随着沿线国家运输成本的下降、贸易自由度的提高,大国和小国的产品质量将趋同,各地区福利水平也都能得到提升。另外,一国内部一体化程度的提高、市场规模的整体扩大,不仅能增加企业的产品销量,而且能促进各地区产品质量的提高。与传统FC模型相比,FC-Q模型下的集聚力更小,产品质量表现出一种分散力。
New economic geography, as an important tool to analyze the spatial agglomeration of firms and population, mainly focuses on topics as spatial agglomeration, market size, product variety, and trade cost, however, pays little attention to how these factors affect regional product quality. This paper takes "the Belt and Road" as the background, based on the Footloose Capital Model (FC), introduces quality to both consumption utility and production cost, and sets up a new economic geography model of the two regions under the DCI framework. The model derives the product quality determination equations of regional firms, and numerically simulates the influencing factors of product quality such as trade cost, substitution elasticity, and market size under an asymmetric structure. The result shows that even if there is no outward investment, by reducing trade cost along "the Belt and Road" and achieve free trade, it is also conducive to the improvement of product quality in the countries along "the Belt and Road". If capital can flow freely and there is outward investment, as trade costs along "the Belt and Road" decrease and trade freedom increases, the quality of products in large and small countries will converge, and welfare level in all regions will be improved. In addition, the overall increase in the size of a country's market expands the sales of firms and contributes to the improvement in the quality of products in their respective regions. Finally, the agglomeration force under the FC-Q model is smaller than under the traditional FC model. Product quality is a manifestation of the dispersion force.
[1] Gao Y,Whalley J,Ren Y.Decomposing China's Export Growth into Extensive Margin,Export Quality and Quantity Eeffects[J].China Economic Review,2014(29):19-26.
[2] Schott P K.Across-product Versus Within-product Specialization in International Trade[J].The Quarterly Journal of Economics,2004(2):647-678.
[3] Hummels D,Skiba A.Shipping the Good Apples Out? An Empirical Confirmation of the Alchian-allen Conjecture[J]. Journal of Political Economy,2004(6):1384-1402.
[4] Hallak J C,Sivadasan J.Productivity,Quality and Exporting Behavior under Minimum Quality Requirements[Z]. MPRA Working Paper,2008.
[5] Khandelwal A K,Schott P K,Wei S J.Trade Liberalization and Embedded Institutional Reform:Evidence from Chinese Exporters[J].American Economic Review,2013(6):2169-2195.
[6] Hallak J C,Schott P K.Estimating Cross-country Differences in Product Quality[J].The Quarterly Journal of Economics,2011(1):417-474.
[7] 徐邦栋,李荣林.出口产品质量研究的文献综述[J].现代管理科学,2018(12):21-23.
[8] Hallak J C.Product Quality and the Direction of Trade[J].Journal of International Economics,2006(1):238-265.
[9] Kugler M,Verhoogen E.Prices,Plant Size,andProduct Quality[J].The Review of Economic Studies,2011(1):307-339.
[10] Baldwin R,Harrigan J.Zeros,Quality,andSpace:Trade Theory and Trade Evidence[J].American Economic Journal Microeconomics,2012(2):60-88.
[11] Melitz M J.The Impact of Trade on Intra-industry Reallocations and Aggregate Industry Productivity[J].Econometrica, 2003(6):1695-1725.
[12] Picard P M,Okubo T.Firms' Locations under Demand Heterogeneity[J].Regional Science & Urban Economics,2012(6):961-974.
[13] Picard P M.Trade, Economic Geography and the Choice of Product Quality[J].Regional Science & Urban Economics, 2015(54):18-27.
[14] Martin P,Rogers C A.Industrial Location and Public Infrastructure[J].Journal of Iinternational Economics,1995(3-4):351.
