Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate the major determinants of China’s outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) in the economies along the “Belt & Road” Initiative (BRI afterward). China works on to advance the agenda of the BRI both at home and abroad. The BRI is set up to promote connectivity in five key areas: policy coordination, infrastructure connectivity, trade facilitation, financial cooperation and people-to-people contacts.Design/methodology/approach: The existing literature is inconclusive with regards to the motives, patterns and determinants of the Chinese OFDI. The authors are, therefore, motivated to undertake this study to shed some new light on the influencing factors of the Chinese OFDI. The authors have made a unique data set that consists of China and its 64 partnering countries of the BRI over a time period of 12 years spanning from 2004 to 2015. This time period is chosen on the chief consideration of data availability. The authors have a balanced panel, and applied the gravity model in line with the theoretical arguments and econometric developments.Findings: The paper assumes that China’s OFDI along the BRI was a function of gross domestic product (GDP), income per capita, distance and WTO. The findings showed that GDP, per capita income and distance were the key determinants of the OFDI. China’s entry into the WTO did not strongly affect the OFDI. China maintained a tradition of historical relationships along the BRI economies. After all, China is relocating its investment resources in line with the consideration of its partnering countries’ economic size, cross-border distance and per capita income.Originality/value: This study is the first of its kinds to analyze the determinants of OFDI by means of gravity model. The authors have covered all the countries along the BRI. Hence, this paper aims to make a substantial contribution to the literature, both from a scientific and a policy perspective.

What are the major determinants of China’s meat exports flows? In addressing this question, we propose a commodity-specific gravity model. This study has employed a unique dataset of 20 years (1997–2016) for China’s pork exports flows to its 31 regular trading partners to estimate the commodity-specific gravity model. The PPML and Heckman selection models are simultaneously estimated to confirm the robustness of the findings. The results reveal that GDP, exchange rate, common language, and country land area are the significant factors affecting the Chinese pork exports flows. Moreover, China’s WTO membership, the ‘Belt & Road’ Initiative, and the common borders have a positive significant impact on its exports of pork.

This paper aims to examine the key determinants and efficiency of China’s agricultural exports with its 114 importing countries by applying the Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) on an augmented gravity model for the period of 2000–2019. The Poisson Pseudo Maximum Likelihood (PPML) and the fixed effect models were also estimated simultaneously to confirm the robustness of our findings. The results reveal that China’s economic size (GDP) and its importing countries, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), common border, and the Chinese language positively determine China’s agricultural export flows. The results, on the other hand, also reveal that China’s agricultural export is adversely influenced by the income (per capita GDP) of China and its trade partners, currency depreciation, distance, and landlocked. On an average account, China has untapped the potential of 51% in its agriculture export with the countries used in this study. We provide policy suggestions as part of our study.

Purpose. The purpose of this study is to trace the theoretical developments of the gravity model of trade. The key question is: what are the dominant features of the development of the gravity trade model? Methodology. This research is conducted by employing a number of methods that include the historical, descriptive and analytical methods. The main contribution of this paper is to trace the historical and theoretical development phases of the gravity model. Findings. This study is a novel attempt in terms of the identification of the four distinctive phases of the development of the gravity model. This work would, therefore, expand the existing literature on the gravity model. We argue that the development of the gravity model is the outcome of many research efforts. A large body of literature has given the model a solid theoretical foundation. But there is no consensus about the proper econometric estimation methods of the model. The gravity model is significant both historically and analytically. It is a useful tool for the analysis of international trade. It has become a popular research device used by the researchers and policy makers around the world. The gravity is regarded as one of the most successful models in the literature of international economics. Originality. The original contributions of this paper lie in streamlining the consistent historical development of the gravity model over a longer period of time-frame, ranging from 1885 to 2018. Limitations and Implications. This work is theoretical aspects of the trade gravity model. Future researchers could overcome the limitations by combining the theoretical and empirical studies in a paper. This paper can help the future researchers in dealing with the broad body of literature of gravity model. Acknowledement. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (grants No.71673223 & 71473197), and a PhD scholarship from the China Scholarship Council (CSC). The first author would like to thank the CSC for the financial support. He also acknowledges the invaluable research advice and guidance received from Dr. Yoto V. Yotov, professor at the School of Economics of the Lebow College of Business at Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA. The authors are highly grateful to the anonymous reviewers, managing editor, and the editor-in chief for their kind help and critical comments on the earlier drafts of the paper. However, the authors are responsible for the contents and limitations of the study. They declared no conflict of interests.