Border Effect of China-US Agricultural Trade Based on the Gravity Model

This paper provides the first comprehensive empirical study on China-U.S. agricultural trade using gravity model to study the border effect between these two countries. The data set covers bilateral trade in agricultural products of the two countries in year 1997, 2002 and 2005. The results indicate that border effect of China-U.S. agricultural trade is significant and tends to drop from 22.4 in year 1997 to 10.2 and 7.0 in year 2002 and 2005 respectively. The standard model is further revised to study the influence of the direction of international trade and regional differences on the border. And it has been found that the China-U.S. border has a large dampening effect on bilateral agricultural trade, is asymmetric and differs greatly across regions.