The impact of intellectual property articles on the quality of export products: Based on text analysis of China's trade agreements

Abstract

In late 2019, Article 24 of the China State Council's Guiding Opinions on Promoting High-quality Trade Development emphasized protection and construction of intellectual property rights and international cooperation and active participation in establishing relevant international rules. This study examined the influence of intellectual property field in regional trade agreements on the quality of China's export products by constructing theoretical and empirical model. By calculating the “Agreement Coverage Rate” and “Legal Commitment Rate” of intellectual property articles, the relationship between the articles of intellectual property and the quality of China's export products is tested based on the OLS regression of fixed effects model using panel data of export trade from China to 15 treaty partners. The robustness of the empirical results is tested using instrumental variable and other methods. The study found that intellectual property articles in bilateral agreement significantly improved the quality of export products, the promotion effect of Agreement Coverage Rate is often greater than that of Legal Commitment Rate, and this effect is realized through the R&D effect of importing countries.