Does one belt and one road initiative facilitate China‘s export of equipment?

ABSTRACT This article uses difference in difference estimation to examine the effect of the One Belt and One Road Initiative on China’s export of equipment to related countries, taking into consideration the different times of policy shock for different countries. The results show that signing the agreement induced a 14.07% increase of China’s export of equipment to the group of countries, which were focused on Asian and African economies, in sub-industries of electrical machinery, general equipment and special equipment, and probably through the financing mechanism of China’s transnational credit. Simply assigning the year when the One Belt and One Road Initiative is launched as the uniform time of policy shock may be misleading.