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Expanding imports and promoting balanced trade have been the direction China has been adhering to in recent years, and are also important measures for China to build an open domestic and international dual cycle development pattern. This paper incorporates the emissions of "three industrial wastes" into the production function, uses the Slack Based Measure model and the globally referenced Malmquist-Leuenberger index to measure the green total factor productivity of Chinese enterprises from 2002 to 2013 in order to measure enterprises' green transformation development. Subsequently, it tests the green development effect of import trade from the perspective of import technology sophistication and import diversification. Afterwards, we discover that the improvement of import sophistication and import diversification can significantly promote enterprises' green transformation, largely through spillover effects and intermediate import competition effects. Furthermore, the green development promotion effect of import trade is greatly heterogeneous. The research in this article provides beneficial insights for China's economic opening-up and high-quality economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of trade on environmental performance has recently become a hot topic. However, little is known about whether import trade affects the energy use of developing countries. Therefore, we use detailed micro-firm data on China's manufacturing sector to investigate the impact of import competition on firms' coal energy intensity. We measure the degree of import competition by import penetration and estimate firm-level data for 2001–2010 using a fixed effects model and 2SLS strategy. The findings suggest that import competition significantly reduces coal energy intensity for Chinese firms, which implies that increasing imports will make it easier for China to meet the objective of "carbon peaking, carbon neutral". By decomposing import competition, we find that differences in the sources of import competition can explain decline changes in firm energy intensity. The theoretical framework and mechanism tests show that the improvement of production and technology application efficiency are the main channels through which import competition decreases energy intensity. However, there is no evidence that import competition has driven firm green transformation process. Finally, we constructed an industry correlation index using the input–output relationship between industries to confirm that import competition affects the energy intensity of near-neighbor industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present evidence using highly disaggregated Chinese firm-product data that increased import competition (resulting from reductions in output tar-iffs) induces incumbent exporters to increase product markups in export mar-kets. This is driven by the upward markup adjustments of products closer to firms' core competencies, while products farther from core competencies have their markups lowered. We also investigate the underlying mechanisms empir-ically. Chinese multi-product exporters invest in improving the quality of their core products (which we term \quality-based core competency") and raise the quality more for products closer to their core competencies. This leads to heterogeneity in the responses of prices and markups to import competition. Our findings are robust to using alternative markup and import competition measures and different estimation methods, addressing endogenous issues and controlling for export and input tariffs. This paper contributes to the litera-ture by finding new evidence that import competition can increase the export markups of products closer to firms' core competencies within multi-product exporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In new trade models with heterogenous firms, trade liberalization between high-cost and low-cost countries is expected, all the rest equal, to increase cost competitiveness (i.e., to decrease real marginal costs) relatively more in the former. We report evidence in favour of this prediction for a sample of countries, accounting for about 85 % of world trade, from the 1980s to the 2000s. The estimation of the country-sector changes in cost competitiveness (relative to the UK) hinges on taking advantage of the observability of international trade patterns to reveal information on cross-country differences in marginal costs, hence ‘ revealed’ ’ cost competitiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper tries to analyze the effects of import competition on the performance of the Indian Machine Tools industry. The analysis period is 1993-94 to 2015-16. Reforms in import policy have contributed to an increased import competition in the Indian Machine Tools industry. The analysis shows profit reducing effect of import competition. The foreign ownership of a firm, however, is seen to have a positive impact on its profit margins. The study indicates that while import competition may have an adverse effect on performance, increased investment in R&D and optimum utilization of capacity can counter such negative impacts. The results show that the risk of doing business is reduced with the advent of import competition. Growth in the manufacturing sector has led to a rapid increase in demand, especially for increasingly sophisticated Computer Numerical Control (CNC) machines. While imports have risen to meet the demand, growth of productivity through investments in R&D is crucial for ensuring good performance in the long run. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We apply a simple method to study the relative quality of Chinese versus European products exported in the clothing sector after the end of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement. Based on the model of Foster et al., (2008), we interpret the change in relative export prices and quantities sold in narrowly defined product categories as an indicator of quality shifts. Using UN Comtrade data, we find that European varieties exported to the US typically sell for a higher price than identical Chinese varieties exported to the US, but this price gap is narrowing. Despite rising prices, Chinese varieties are gaining market share. This opposite movement of relative prices and quantities sold in the same destination market are a strong indication of China's moving up the quality ladder in its clothing exports relative to the EU. While European core products in clothing are stable over time, Chinese exports show product dynamics with exit and entry of new core products every year.JEL Classifications: F12, F13, F14 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]