Determinants of Exports in China’s Meat Industry: A Gravity Model Analysis

ABSTRACT

What are the major determinants of China’s meat exports flows? In addressing this question, we propose a commodity-specific gravity model. This study has employed a unique dataset of 20 years (1997–2016) for China’s pork exports flows to its 31 regular trading partners to estimate the commodity-specific gravity model. The PPML and Heckman selection models are simultaneously estimated to confirm the robustness of the findings. The results reveal that GDP, exchange rate, common language, and country land area are the significant factors affecting the Chinese pork exports flows. Moreover, China’s WTO membership, the ‘Belt & Road’ Initiative, and the common borders have a positive significant impact on its exports of pork.

KEY WORDS:

• the ‘Belt & Road’ Initiative (BRI)
• border
• China
• gravity model
• Heckman selection model
• Heckscher-Ohlin model
• Linder hypothesis
• meat industry
• panel data
• pork exports
• PPML model
• World Trade Organization (WTO)

JEL Codes:

• F 10
• F 12
• F 13
• F 14

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to the anonymous reviewers and the editor-in-Chief for their constructive comments on the earlier draft of the paper.

Supplementary material

Supplementary data can be accessed here.

Notes

1. The BRI was initially introduced as the ‘One Belt, One Road’ Initiative (OBOR). In this paper, we prefer to use the BRI. The BRI is commonly known as the Yi Dai, Yi Lu (一带一路)。.

2. ‘Haram’ is an Arabic word that indicates something forbidden. The opposite of the word is Halal. The term ‘Halal’ is used to denote the things that are allowed in Islam. Muslims prefer to consume ‘Halal’ foods.

3. In Mandarin Chinese, Weizu is the Islamic ethnic group of Xinjiang.

Additional information

Funding

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No.71673223).