The Chinese government piloted the free trade zone (FTZ) policy of Shanghai in 2013, successively constructing the FTZs in Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Fuzhou, and Xiamen in 2015, and the other 14 zones in Liaoning, Zhejiang, Henan, Hubei, Chongqing, Sichuan, and Shaanxi provinces by March 2017. The FTZs offer favourable policies to foreign-invested enterprises by high-level trading and investment facilitation. It creates a more relaxed policy environment for foreign investors, simplifying their entry with benefits of entering.  

An increasing number of studies have analysed the importance of creating a fair and free environment for investment, typically discussing the efficiency of the FTZ policy for reducing transaction costs by unleashing entry restrictions for service sectors. Despite claiming a positive effect of the policy on attracting foreign investment, a critical flaw of previous studies reflects on being allured to take an optimistic judgement for granted towards the policy’s effect with little empirical evidence. Therefore, this article aims to empirically examine how much the pilot FTZ policy can benefit the FTZ cities to attract foreign-invested enterprises. We propose:

该文章以“Does the pilot free trade zone policy attract the entering of foreign-invested enterprises? The evidence from China”为题，发表在《Applied Economics Letters》Published online: 06 Aug 2020