Deepening Free Trade Agreement Provisions and Fintech Development
The world is in the midst of major changes not seen in a century,and the global economic landscape is undergoing profound evolution.Free trade agreements(FTAs)show a typical trend of heterogeneous deepening,and fintech is increasingly becoming a common choice for countries to enhance the level of financial services and financial competitiveness.How to realize FTA deepening,especially heterogeneous deepening of fintech provisions and rules,has become the key to the global strategy of high-standard free trade areas.Existing studies have made preliminary explorations of the heterogeneous impact of FTA deepening and the impact factors of fintech,but they still have not sought a breakthrough from the perspective of regional economic cooperation in terms of the development of the new international fintech industry.This paper more accurately assesses the heterogeneous impact of FTA deepening and fintech development,and then explores the direction of FTA deepening and boosting the change of new fintech industry.This paper uses the Deep Trade Agreements database of the World Trade Organization(WTO)to construct FTA horizontal depth and vertical depth indicators,quantitatively measures the heterogeneity of FTA deepening at different levels,and further uses the Orbis database to identify and measure the level of national fintech development.On this basis,this paper empirically tests the significant positive effect of FTA deepening on fintech development.Heterogeneity analysis shows that FTAs covering the areas of politics,economic integration and R&D cooperation present a facilitating effect,and capital flow provisions and intellectual property provisions deepening has a stronger facilitating effect.Mechanism tests show that FTA deepening promotes fintech development by lowering data barriers,promoting technological progress,upgrading infrastructure and attracting foreign capital inflows.In terms of China's FTA deepening strategy,China's FTA deepening has a stronger facilitating effect on fintech development,and China should join the Comprehensive Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership(CPTPP)on the basis of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership(RCEP),so as to comprehensively build a"Chinese model"of fintech rules.The results of this study show that it is necessary to actively sign and upgrade high-level FTAs,pay more attention to the depth of provisions in the WTO-X area,promote more FTAs to cover politics,deep economic integration and R&D cooperation;and emphasize the refinement of provisions in the areas of investment,capital flows,intellectual property rights,and other types of provisions.This study portrays the impact effect of FTA dynamics in an all-round way,provides a more comprehensive theoretical explanation of the heterogeneity of FTA deepening and the impact of fintech,and makes up for the limitations of qualitative homogenization indicators.Focusing on specific fintech provisions,it makes the theoretical framework more suitable for China's situation,and provides policy reference for China to take the initiative in the new round of global fintech rulemaking.
万方数据
维普
