Export And Productivity Growth In Chinese Industries: Mechanism And Evidence

The effect of international trade on a country's economic growth is one of the most important topics in trade economics. Academic researches focusing on relationship between trade and economic growth fall in two main groups so far. One mainly put on the effect of export on growth, the other, on that of import on productivity growth. As far as the effect of export on the economic growth, most researchers concentrated on testing the hypothesis of export as "engine of economic growth". Few papers studied the relationship between export and productivity. As far as the mechanism of the export and productivity is concerned, little attention has been paid to this field. This dissertation will study the relationship between export and productivity growth and analyze the mechanism of export stimulating productivity growth, In the meantime, this dissertation will use Chinese industrial data of export and productivity from 1992-2007 to testify the relationship between export and productivity growth and found which mechanism comes into effect.In theory, this dissertation analyzes the mechanisms of export and productivity based on the trade theory and literature. The three mechanisms are scale economics, technology spillover and resource reallocation. Next, this thesis describes the phenomenon of China's industrial export and its productivity. The volume of China's industrial export becoming larger and the output value of China's industries have increased largely. However, the output value of export and non-export industries differs largely. Then this thesis study the typical enterprises'export and technical change. Enterprises, which engage in the export activities, have more patents than the enterprises which not engaging in the export activities. As far as the resource reallocation mechanism, this thesis did not found the evidence showing that capital and labor shifting from non-export industry to export industry. Based on the literature review and the economic phenomenon, this thesis analyzes the fundamental reason which export will accelerate the productivity growth rate. Export increases productivity level through the internal and external static economics, and it also accelerates productivity growth rates through "learning by doing" effect. Technology spillover lies in the embodied and disembodied technology spillover. Embodied technology spillover includes the product imitation and reverse engineering. Disembodied technology spillover refers to the human resource training and technical assistance. Resources reallocation often refers to labor and capital shifting between industries and within industries.As far as the experimental analysis, this thesis mainly deals with the export and total factor productivity. The relation between export and labor productivity is in the appendix. Firstly, this thesis study the relationship between export and TFP in a unified econometric model and assess the mechanism through introducing interaction terms. Result shows that it is export but not import promotes Chinese industrial productivity. Next, this thesis analyzes reasons why some mechanisms don't work well. Results show that scale efficiencies of China's industries have not changed because of the export. Technology spillover through export mainly promotes China industrial technical efficiency but has no effect on technical change. Technology spillover has more effect on the export industry than non-export industry. As regards to resource reallocation, experimental results show that allocation efficiency of Chinese industry is very low, and no evidence show that export can change the allocation efficiency. The reason is that our country has no integral market and factor price distortion has existed.In a word, the research on the relationship between export and productivity including mechanism analysis and empirical test based on the data of export and Chinese industrial productivity will help us understand the importance of export to economic growth from the angel of productivity. And the suggestions on how to acquire more export benefit will avail government make appropriate trade and economic policies.