Export Liberalization and Firm’s Energy Efficiency: Theory and Evidence

Since international trade is developing rapidly and the world is facing serious problem of energy shortages, this paper focuses on analyzing if export liberalization can help to improve the country’s energy efficiency. In this paper, we establish the theoretical trade model at micro-level and study how export liberalization affects energy use performance of the firm. Then, we employ data of Chinese exporters to conduct empirical analysis. Our results suggest export liberalization can improve energy use performance of the firm, which shows that export liberalization has positive effects on firm’s energy use performance. The results of mechanism test suggest that export liberalization can improve firms’ productivity and increase firms’ innovation ability, which can further help to increase firms’ energy use efficiency. Altogether, this paper gives evidence on the effects of export liberalization on energy use performance, which reveals the importance of trade liberalization in solving the global energy problems.