Browsing by study line "Politics and the International Economy"

As a new pattern of international trade, Cross-border e-commerce (CBEC) has quickly captured the market with its convenience. Nevertheless, compared to total international trade, the volume of CBEC is relatively small. The non-efficiency of trade hinders the development of CBEC. As a major global economic power, China has an important position in the global CBEC and is committed to improving trade facilitation to better develop CBEC. The thesis aims to study whether and how trade facilitation in 16 Central and Eastern European Countries (CEE countries) affects China’s CBEC transaction scale with them. This thesis assesses trade facilitation in four dimensions: institutions, infrastructure, market, and technologies. Through principal component analysis (PCA), this paper calculates the trade facilitation index for China’s 16 CEE trading partners from 2011 to 2019. Based on some estimation techniques, this thesis regresses China’s CBEC trade scale on trade facilitation index, GDP per capita, weighted geographical distance, and total population and compares the different performance of the two income groups and (non-)EU membership. It is found that there is a positive correlation between the trade facilitation in 16 CEE countries and China’s CBEC transaction scale, and there is also a relationship between GDP per capita, weighted geographical distance, income group, EU membership, and CBEC transaction scale. The impact of infrastructure, market, and technologies in trade facilitation on the CBEC transaction scale is significantly positive. Finally, it provides some possible implications to promote CBEC.

From the perspective of economic growth, this research observes the relationship between the trade between Eastern Europe and Germany and the economic growth of Germany since 1998. Since the drastic changes in Eastern Europe, the economic and trade cooperation and industrial integration between Germany and Eastern Europe have become increasingly close. After the European debt crisis, Germany's manufacturing advantages were combined with the higher level of productivity and consumer market in Eastern Europe, and a differential phenomenon appeared in the trade between different Eastern European countries and Germany. This research attempts to find out the factors that have an impact on German economic growth from two perspectives: the trade between Germany and Eastern European countries and the trade between Germany and the EU member states in Eastern European countries. By analyzing the data over the years by using VAR model, this research finds that Germany's economic growth has increased imports from Eastern European countries. If only focus on the EU member states in Eastern European countries, the EU has indeed promoted Germany's economic growth to a certain extent. Through data analysis, it can be seen that exports to Eastern Europe will not promote Germany's economic growth, while imports and exports to eastern and central European member states can promote Germany's economic growth. Therefore, European economic integration is a better choice. Considering the promotion mechanism of German economic growth, it can be found that Germany is more dependent on machinery manufacturing and agricultural product manufacturing. In order to better promote the trade, Germany has made a lot of efforts, such as improving product quality, increasing scientific research funds, paying attention to talent training, improving innovation mechanism, etc. What is more, Germany has continuously adjusted its economic policies to suit its foreign trade.