Determinants of China’s Rice Export after WTO Accession: A Gravity Model Analysis

Abstract

This paper applied the commodity-specific gravity approach to investigate the influenced factors to China’s rice export to its major trading partners after World Trade Organization (WTO) accession over 2001- 2014 period. The gravity model was augmented with factors from both exporter’s and importer’s sides. The empirical results revealed that, excepting distance, the remained variables including Gross Domestic Product, population, income, exchange rate, production and price had statistical significance and correlated with the total export as hypothesized. Among these variables, price and production reported as the best predictors, explaining 81.30% and 80.54% variation in China’s total export, respectively. Moreover, the determinants of China’s rice export highly depended on the components of exporter side than that of importer sides. This study results provide the statistical and practical significance for trade policy formulation to promote China’s rice exports in world markets.