Export Growth and Quality Determination of Wood Forest Products: Evidence from China

Abstract

The rapid-developed scale of China’s trade in wood forest products has undergone a considerable uptick. Concomitant with the evolution of high-quality development paradigms, product quality within trade frameworks has gained escalating scrutiny. Based on the statistical analysis of the export characteristics of China’s wood forest products, this study leverages BACI data spanning from 1998 to 2017. Utilizing regression-based inverse methods, the study quantifies the quality attributes of these export products, dissects fluctuations in quality, and places particular emphasis on the markets within “Belt and Road Initiative” economies to elucidate dynamic trends and spatial distribution characteristics of export quality in this geoeconomic domain. Based on this, the fixed effect model, random effect model, and system GMM are used to empirically examine the influencing factors of China’s wood forest product export quality. This study found that wood-based panel products have the highest quality, followed by paper products and wood furniture among the three major categories of wood forest products. Besides, the overall quality levels of the three products exported to countries participating in the Belt and Road initiative haven’t significantly changed, while notable changes are evident across divergent export destination markets. In addition, an empirical study on the influencing factors of the export product quality of wood forest products is conducted, which indicates that total factor productivity, R&D investment, capital intensity, labor costs, and foreign direct investment are influencing factors. Finally, based on the research conclusions, suggestions are provided on how to improve the export quality of wood forest products.