Endogenous variables

Meaning and explanation

Data source and processing

RE

RErepresents the real exchange rate of RMB against the United States dollar, because nominal exchange rate does not eliminate the price factor between the two countries and can’t reflect the truerelationship between exchange rate and trade structure, this paper uses the Chinese and American Consumer Price index to calculate the bilateral real exchange rate to eliminate the impact of inflation on the exchange rate.

The Sino-US bilateral nominal exchange rate data comes from the People’s Bank of China website, through the monthly final exchange rate data to get the quarterly nominal exchange rate. U.S. monthly CPI data comes from the U.S. Labor Department’s monthly month-on-month CPI, after the X12 seasonal adjustment and then take the monthly average of the U.S. quarterly CPI. China’s monthly month-on-month CPI data comes from the National Bureau of Statistics, processed by the same approach as the United States. Based on the first quarter of 2006, the CPI benchmark index of the United States and China are calculated, and finally calculate the Sino-US bilateral real exchange rate, which is expressed in RE.

ES

ESrepresentsChina’s export Trade product technology structure, Referring to the classification method of Lall (2000), based on HS classification criteria, this paper divides the export products of the United States into primary products, resource-intensive products, low technology products, medium and high technology products according to the technical value added. The technical structure of China’s exports to the United States is represented by the medium and high technology products’ amount of China’s total amount of exports to the United States, which is expressed in ES.

The HS classified export data are from the People’s Republic of China General Administration website.

Exogenous variables

Meaning and explanation.

Data source and processing.

GDPG

GDPGrepresentsUS real GDP growth rate, the real GDP growth rate in the United States is to explain its changes to the export structure from the perspective of American demand for China’s export trade products. The real GDP growth rate of US represents the change rate of foreign income, and the change of foreign income will affect the change of American demand for China’s export products. While the foreign consumers have different income elasticity to the demand of China’s export trade products. Therefore, the change of income will cause the change of demand. The export scale of China’s export products has different degrees of impact on the export of our products structure, but the impact of the change of export structure and exchange ratechange on foreign GDP growth rate is small, so in this paper , the real GDP growth rate is an exogenous variable.

The data of America’s quarterly real GDP come from the U.S. Bureau of Economic, which was seasonally adjusted by X12 to calculate the real GDP growth rate for the quarter, expressed in GDPG.

FTG

FTGrepresentsthe proportion of the FDI to GDP, the proportion of the FDI to GDP is to explain its changes to the structure of export trade from the point of supply of export trade, because China’s FDI enterprises have a very important role in China’s export. The movement of international capital is often accompanied by the movement of technology, management experience and so on, and the advanced technology will bring the change of product technology content, and finally promote the change of export trade structure. the proportion of the FDI to GDP represents the role of foreign capital in China’s economy, to explain the impact of source of factors on export structure. The existing literatures regarded it as an endogenous variable when using VAR model to deal with the research, but in this paper we argue that FDI is a policy variable to a large extent, which is influenced by the factors of national policy. The impact of export structure on FDI is smaller, so the proportion of FDI to GDP is analyzed as exogenous variable.

China’s GDP data are from the National Bureau of Statistics, and FDI are the actual amount of foreign investment, coming from the Ministry of Commerce.