The impact of summit visits on bilateral trade: Empirical evidence from China

Abstract The relationship between international trade and politics is very close, but we know little about the effects of summit visits on trade. This article divides summits into visits by top‐level and secondary leaders, based on manually collect and collate data; inspects the outward and inward visits between China and other countries and examines the relationship between summit visits and bilateral trade using panel data covering 163 countries from 2001 to 2014. The study finds that (1) both inward and outward visits promote exports, although the effect on imports is unclear; (2) the higher the level of the summit leaders, the greater the promotion effect (the visit effect of China's top‐level leaders is especially prominent); (3) reciprocal summit visits between China and developing countries have a greater trade promotion effect; (4) the promotion effect of China's leaders on exports has time‐leading and ‐lagging effects, and the effect of summit visits is different for different categories of export products.