The effectiveness of entry deregulation: Quasi-experimental evidence from China's export compulsory inspection deregulation
Journal of Development Economics · 2026 · Zhiqing Yang、Zhiyuan Zhu、Peiyao Liu、Lianfa Luo
中文摘要
何时以及如何逐步取消现行管制,是发展中国家面临的一个至关重要的政策问题。本文利用中国取消出口商品强制检验制度作为一项准自然实验,考察了出口检验放松的效应。通过将10位HS产品编码与企业标识相匹配,并整合四个不同的微观数据库,我们构建了一个包含8700个观测值的独特企业层面面板数据集。运用双重差分(DID)框架,我们发现放松出口强制检验对企业出口产生总体正向影响,且未导致以消费者支付意愿衡量的出口质量出现显著下降。我们还发现,检验放松增强了企业的创新能力,这表明创新可能是促进出口绩效的一种机制。此外,我们发现出口检验放松的效应在竞争程度较高的行业中更强。我们的研究结果为定期重新评估监管的益处提供了经验证据,并表明设计良好的逐步退出机制能够促进新兴经济体的创新驱动增长。
Abstract
When and how to phase out existing regulations represents a critical policy issue for developing countries. This paper investigates the effects of export inspection deregulation, exploiting the removal of China's compulsory inspection regulation for export commodities as a quasi-experiment. We construct a unique firm-level panel dataset comprising 8700 observations by mapping 10-digit HS product codes to firm identifiers and integrating four distinct micro-databases. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) framework, we find that deregulating export compulsory inspection exerts an overall positive impact on firm exports, without causing a significant decline in export quality as measured by consumer willingness to pay. We also find that inspection deregulation strengthens firms' innovation capacity, which suggests that innovation could be a mechanism that promotes export performance. Furthermore, we find that the effects of export inspection deregulation are stronger in industries characterized by higher levels of competition. Our findings provide empirical evidence for the benefits of periodic regulatory re-evaluation and suggest that well-designed phase-out mechanisms can foster innovation-led growth in emerging economies.