Export Liberzalization and Exporters’ Leverage : Evidence from China's WTO Accession

This paper investigates the effect of export liberalization on exporters’ financial leverage. With the ASIF and CCST matched data on Chinese exporter leverage around WTO China’s accession , we identify a negative causal effect of export liberalization, removal the trade policy uncertainty, on exporter’s leverage using a differencein-difference approach. The results are robust under a series of test. Further analyses reveal that the export liberalization reduces the within industry financial leverage dispersion