This paper employs a natural language text processing analysis to quantify the depth of intellectual property protection in the Asia-Pacific Free Trade Agreement,and empirically examine the impact of the depth of protection on the export product quality.The main finding is that strengthening the degree of FTA intellectual property protection will improve export product quality significantly.Heterogeneity analysis shows that the depth of FTA intellectual property protection could significantly improve the quality of export products in north-north and north-south countries.From the perspective of product types,the depth of FTA intellectual property protection can promote the export quality of both high-IP-intensive products and low-IP-intensive products,but it has a more significant effect on the export quality of high-IP-intensive products.In addition,there are some differences in different industries.From the perspective of driving factors,this paper finds that the technology spillover effect caused by FDI and R&D incentive effect are an important channel for FTA intellectual property protection to promote export product quality.Furthermore,this paper finds that China's signing FTA and strengthening the degree of intellectual property protection will improve Chinese export product quality.As a result,this paper concludes that effectively and progressively deepening FTA intellectual property rules,reasonably and prudently selecting FTA partners,and adhering to the standard international trade and investment rules will improve Chinese export product quality.
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