| In recent years,affected by uncertainties such as the economic slowdown,the external demand shocks,and the frequent trade frictions,the export diversification strategy of Chinese micro-enterprises has been blocked and export fluctuation is a serious concern,leading to that Chinese enterprises’ sustainable export development and international competitiveness have been severely impaired.In particular,a large number of short-term trade relationship reflect the uncertainty related to the formation of trade relationship.According to the statistics from Chinese customs database,the export survival rate of Chinese multi-product enterprises is low,and the average value of the export survival lifetime of enterprises is 3.18,72% of enterprises’ export survival lifetime does not exceed 3 years,75% of export survival lifetime related to new product,new destination and new portfolio does not exceed 2 years,and with the export survival lifetime extends to 4 years,its survival probability is 8.6%,3.9%,4.6% and 3%.To this end,for developing countries,the key factor for faster total export growth is the higher survival rate of existing export trade flows.From this we can see that the improvement of international competitiveness not only requires new export products and markets,but also the maintaining and deepening of export relationship.On the one hand,existing literature provides positive theoretical support and empirical validation for export diversification.On the other hand,the transient export behavior characteristics weakens the implementation effect of the diversification strategy to cope with external shocks,causing relevant scholars to pay attention to the export survival issue.However,in the existing theoretical research and empirical literature,the international competitiveness research rarely mentions the export duration,and the latest related theorical developments focus on heterogeneous enterprises and the entry of export markets,the trade cost reduction how effect resources shift from low-productivity enterprises to high-productivity enterprises.Until recent years,product heterogeneity has been valued by international trade and strategic management scholars.On the one hand,with the continuous extension and improvement of multi-product heterogeneous firm trade theory represented by Melitz(2003),it can not only answer the resource allocation mechanism between enterprises,but also can answer the resources reconfiguration effect between products within enterprises,which helps to better understand product portfolio decisions and the short-term export behavior within enterprises.On the other hand,Hausmann and Klinger(2006)proposed and constructed the product space theory.The main point of the product space theory is that there are differences and incomplete replacement of the core competencies required to produce different products,and for developing countries the information spillover effect from the new export products to the previous export products basket is significant.Given the product space theory focuses on the description of the product upgrade path for a country,this paper applies the product space theory to micro-enterprise level,and adopt the multi-product heterogeneous firm trade theory to analysis Chinese enterprises’ export dynamic.The article’s core idea is that under the multi-product heterogeneous firm trade theory,adopt the key indicator(product distance)in the product space theory to specifically examine the product heterogeneity,and this indicator means that exporting similar products requires enterprises to own similar resources or capabilities,which are closely related to the concept of "proximity" used in the multi-product heterogeneous firm trade model.For all this,this article focuses on the impact of product distance on Chinese multi-product enterprises’ export survival?What is the impact mechanism of export diversification on the above relationship? Are there differences in enterprises’ ownership,shipment,regional distribution for the influence of product distance and export diversification on export fluctuation? Furthermore,are there direct and indirect effects of enterprise’s jumping ability(the sum of weighted product distance)and export diversification on Chinese multi-product enterprises’ export binary margin? Based on mathematical derivation of the multi-product heterogeneous firm trade model,with the help of Chinese industrial firm-level micro data,Chinese customs data and BACI data from 2000 to2015,this article verifies and enriches research conclusions from multiple perspectives.Through theoretical analysis and empirical validation,this paper mainly obtains the following four research conclusions.First,based on the multi-product heterogeneous firm trade model,this article innovatively introduces the core concept of "proximity" in the product space theory to quantify product heterogeneity,and gradually proposes three main propositions through mathematical derivation.Research results show that product distance index is a good representative of the distance from the core competitiveness found in the multi-product heterogeneous firm trade model,and when multi-product enterprises gradually moving,it is more likely to successfully introduce and deepen export survival and growth.The above three propositions are fully supported,and the above model comprehensively takes product heterogeneity and export diversification into consideration,which effectively extends the specific research related to the multi-product heterogeneous firm model and provides a new theoretical basis for future management research.Second,this article highlights the importance of export survival research and further extends the related research progress of multi-product heterogeneous firm trade model.Research results show that whether new trade flows in the enterprise,enterprise-product,enterprise-destination,and enterprise-product-destination levels can survive depend on the ability distance between the export product and the existing export product basket,further illustrating that enterprises should be slow in diversifying export baskets,which is more conducive to achieving stable export growth.Third,most traditional studies focus on merely product diversification or geographic diversification,the relationship between export diversification and export survival is rarely considered at the same time.Research results show that this article distinguishes export diversification into product,geographic,and portfolio diversification,highlights the positive role of export diversification in promoting export survival,the negtive role of product distance on export diversification,and that product distance not only has a direct negative impact on export survival,but also has an indirect negtive effect on export survival by reducing product,geographic,and portfolio diversification,especially for geographical diversification.Meanwhile,the export survival research also examines the different influence of the enterprise’s ownership,shipment,and regional distribution on the above research conclusions.Fourth,on the one hand,this paper performs the survival analysis in different enterprise-product-destination levels,to explore the dynamic influence of product distance,erport diversification on the export survival related to new produt,destination,and portfolio in sequence.On the other hand,on the enterprise level,this paper weigths and sums product distance index to calculate enterprise’s jumping ability,and on the basis this study further explores the direct and indirect positive mechanism of enterprise’s jumping ability,export diversification and export binary margin.The two above research not only comprehensively considers export fluctuation,specifically including export survival and export binary margin,but also concerns the research difference in varous enterprise-productdestination levels at the same time. |
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