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Has the Establishment of a FTZ Promoted the High-quality Development of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry?——Quasi Natural Experiments Based on the Establishment of the First Three Batches of Pilot FTZ

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Abstract

Purpose

As a strategic emerging and high-tech industry in China, the pharmaceutical industry is significantly impacted by the establishment of free trade zones (FTZs). However, current research on the effects of China’s FTZ establishment has mainly focused on qualitative studies from a macro perspective, such as economic growth, with fewer studies providing direct quantitative evaluations from the perspective of the micro industry. This paper aims to explore the policy effects and mechanisms that promote the high-quality development of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry, taking industrial structure upgrading as the entry point.

Methods

Based on 2009–2021 provincial-level panel data, this paper constructs an evaluation index system for the high-quality development of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry and calculates the high-quality development level of this industry in the first three FTZ batches. It empirically examines the impact of FTZ policies on the high-quality development of the industry by adopting time-varying difference-in-differences (DID) and spatial DID methods.

Results

Overall, pilot FTZ establishment can significantly promote the high-quality development of the pharmaceutical industry. Regarding spatial effects, pilot FTZ establishment has a spatial spillover effect that promotes the high-quality development of the industry in neighboring regions. Regarding the driving mechanism, the effect of pilot FTZ establishment occurs mainly through industrial structure upgrading, which enhances the high-quality development level of the pharmaceutical industry. Regarding regional comparison, coastal pilot FTZ establishment has a smaller promoting effect on the high-quality development of the industry than inland pilot FTZ establishment.

Conclusion

This paper reveals the impact of pilot FTZ establishment on the high-quality development of the pharmaceutical manufacturing industry and the impact path from the perspective of institutional change, providing factual evidence at the institutional level for interpreting the driving factors of the high-quality development of this industry.

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Availability of Data and Material

The datasets analyzed during the current study are publicly available.

Code Availability

The code in this paper is all from the software.

Notes

  1. Due to space constraints, the results of the autocorrelation and multicollinearity test are not presented in this paper but can be obtained from the author if necessary.

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Acknowledgements

l would like to give my heartfelt thanks to my supervisor, Mr. Dingxiang Fan, whose suggestions and encouragement have given me much insight into these translation studies. It has been a great privilege and joy to study under his guidance and supervision.

Funding

No funding was received for conducting this study.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Hunan University of Technology, School of Economics and Business, Zhuzhou, 412000, China

    Dingxiang Fan, Mengjie He, Yanting Yu & Yuguo Liu

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  1. Dingxiang Fan
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  2. Mengjie He
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  3. Yanting Yu
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  4. Yuguo Liu
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [Dingxiang FAN], [Mengjie HE],[Yanting YU]and [Yuguo LIU]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [Mengjie HE] and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Mengjie He.

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This study was granted exemption from requiring ethics approval,because this paper does not deal with ethical and legal issues.

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The authors declare that they have no competing financial interests exist.

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Appendix

Appendix

Durbin-watson statistic(transformed) = 1.972347.

The range of values for the DW statistic is [0,4]. It is generally believed that a DW value between 1.5 and 2.5 indicates the absence of autocorrelation. The DW test result in this paper is 1.972347, indicating that there is no autocorrelation problem between variables.

The results of multicollinearity test are shown in the table below:

Table 13 VIF test results
Full size table

Multicollinearity refers to the high correlation between explanatory variables in a regression model. This correlation makes the estimation of regression coefficients unstable or unreliable. When there is high correlation between explanatory variables, it is difficult to assess the independent contribution of each explanatory variable to the dependent variable. Generally, when the VIF value of a predictor variable exceeds 10 or 20, there is a serious multicollinearity issue. As shown in Table 2, there is no multicollinearity among the variables.

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Fan, D., He, M., Yu, Y. et al. Has the Establishment of a FTZ Promoted the High-quality Development of the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Industry?——Quasi Natural Experiments Based on the Establishment of the First Three Batches of Pilot FTZ. J Pharm Innov 19, 30 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12247-024-09837-7

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