| As the margin for China to promote technological progress by imitating advanced countries has been getting narrow,the demographic dividend is also shrinking,which pushes the transformation and upgrading of industries and trade to an extreme urge.In recent years,Chinese government issued several informatization related plans and policies,with the expectation of informatization being a new source of propulsion and a head start,to promote the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries such as manufacturing.Will the development of informatization give impetus to the improvement of manufacturing export structure and technical content of a country?If so,what are the mechanisms?Few of the previous studies referred to it.This subj ect is interdisciplinary,with not only good academic value,but also important practical significance to the current stage of China.This paper will mainly focus on the influences and the mechanisms of informatization on the export sophistication of a country's manufacturing industry.According to the literature review in the second chapter and the international comparative study in the third and the fourth chapter,the potential impact of informatization on the export sophistication of manufacturing and its two paths will be explored by logical and modeling analysis in the fifth chapter.In chapter six and seven there will be evidences for normative analysis provided,respectively,based on empirical and case studies.And at the end of this paper,in the eighth chapter,the conclusions will be given,and the policy implications as well as the future research directions will be discussed.The theoretical analysis suggests that,the informatization promotion may increase the export sophistication of manufacturing through two paths.The first path is Information Cost Saving Effect,which enables enterprises to reduce costs of dealing with uncertainty,improve response rate and collaboration efficiency of industrial chains,promote the evolution of social division of labor and a better grasp of market information,so as to save the information cost,with a direct positive effect on decreasing the cost of production and trade.Due to the differences in information intensity,the promotion for higher complex industries will be greater than the lower ones.The second one is Technological Innovation Promoting Effect.The informatization promotion can push forward the technological innovation of manufacturing by facilitating the cost decline of innovation elements,including information resources,R&D capital and human capital.Because of the investment of these elements being more intensive for higher complex industries,the promoting effect can be stronger on their production and export to higher complex industries than to the lowers.The paper established several theoretical models,to explain the mechanisms and paths mentioned above,referring to Costinot(2009),Feenstra(2003),Aghion(2010)and so on.In the empirical study,the infomatization and export data of 39 countries in 1995-2011 and 3 econometric models is used to verify the relevant hypotheses.The results show that:Firstly,in the case of controlling state and year,high complex manufacturing industries have higher degree of information intensities than those of mid and low complex industries Secondly,a country's net export index(net exports/GDP)of manufacturing is positively correlated with the level of informatization;and as for the influence of informatization on manufacturing net exports,the one based on customs data is less than the one based on value-added data.Thirdly,manufacturing export sophistication index is positively related to the level of informatization,and as for the influence of informatization on export sophistication of manufacturing,the one in the situation of using customs data is high than the one in the case of using value-added export data.Fourthly,by tests using data of manufacturing industries with different complexities,it is found that the direct effect of informatization on exports and net exports,is larger for high complex manufacturing industries than that for the mid and the low ones,which,to an extent,proves the existence of Information Cost Saving Effect.Fifthly,informatization has an significantly indirect positive effect on manufacturing export and net export indexes by affecting R&D index,and the influence for high complex manufacturing industries is greater than that for the mid and the low ones,confirming the existent of the Technological Innovation Promoting Effect to some extent.Sixthly,in terms of the effect on manufacturing exports and export sophistication,the direct effect of informatization is greater than its indirect effect brought by promoting R&D index,which suggests that the Information Cost Savings Effect plays a leading role between the two paths.In the case study,the current situation of Chinese smartphone industry is analyzed,and a typical vendor MI,who took full advantages of internet to enhance its competitiveness and grew up rapidly,is further explored.It indicates that:firstly,during 2010-2015.the competitiveness of Chinese smartphone vendors in the domestic market were enhanced significantly,occupying dominant positions in market share,which was also boosting fast in global market in a short time.Secondly,as a new domestic smartphone vendor,the explosive growth of MI was largely attributed to its smart use of the internet,including:Saving costs of advertising,channels,stock and management by using the internet as platforms and tools,developing product and process innovations through engaging large number of customers on the internet,and building a new business model of mobile phone industry with the assistance of internet.Thirdly,the rapid rise of the whole Chinese smartphone industry is also in relation to the rapid development of the Internet in China.Case study shows that,the development of informatization may strengthen the international competitiveness of high complex manufacturing industries of China,such as smartphone,by Information Cost Saving Effect and Technological Innovation Promoting Effect.The innovation of this paper are as follows:Firstly,it is the first time to form a framework for analyzing the effect of informatization on the export sophistication of a country's manufacturing.Secondly,it is found that informatization can be a source of power to improve manufacturing export sophistication and competitive power of high complex manufacturing industries of a country.Thirdly,the paper expands the empirical study on the relationship between informatization and export,and proves the existence and the importance of the two paths of informatization affecting manufacturing export sophistication of a country.Fourthly,in the international comparative analysis and empirical analysis,both customs data and value-added trade data are used simultaneously to calculate the core indicators,which reduces the potential distortions of the results by using customs data only.The huge network with large population and language unification,determines that China has a greater potential of information resources than that of most developed countries.Meanwhile,the solid foundation of manufacturing also endows China with a better ability to absorb information technology and First Mover Advantage on infomatization than other major developing countries.Based on the findings of this paper,we provides some policy suggestions on how to make better use of the potential of information resources,promoting the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing as well as accelerating the progress of high complex industries of China. |
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