Research On The Effect Of "Export Learning" Based On Export Production Model

Whether exporting can improve firm productivity, or whether the "learn-ing-by-exporting" effect exists, is an important issue in the microeconomic trade liter-ature in recent years. Considering the important role that the export-oriented develop-ment strategy has played in China’s economic growth, using micro data to examine "learning-by-exporting" effect, or the more generalized productivity promotion effect caused by exporting, has important policy implications.This paper focuses on the "learning-by-exporting" in Chinese firms. Beginning with the study of the various mechanisms and potential influencing factors of "learning-by-exporting", this paper seeks to examine the "learning-by-exporting" without relying on the traditional strategies commonly used in domestic studies for this subject, of which the robustness is in doubt. Constructing and estimating a production model with endogenous export variables which can affect the future path of a firm’s productivity, this paper examines the applicability of the "learning-by-exporting" hypothesis in the context of the China from a new perspective, using Chinese industrial firm data from 1998 to 2007. Compared with previous studies, the strategy adopted in this paper rely on less assumptions, and are more robust and efficient in production function estimation. Besides the subjects studied by previous research, this paper studies the effects of ex-porting intensity, the industry agglomeration level firms are facing, and firms’R&D investment on the magnitude of "learning by exporting", with its robust strategy.The main conclusions include:(1) from the sample statistics, exporters are doing better than non-exporters in average wage per capita, sales per capita, value added per capita and other firm performance indicators; (2) in general, there is a certain degree of "learning by exporting" in the Chinese firm data:a year of exporting can cause a firm’s average productivity increases about 2.2%; (3) firms in the central region have the larg-est "learning by exporting" effect, while firms in the eastern region is extremely insig-nificant, which is believed to be caused by the large quantity of processing-trade ex-porters in the eastern region after subsequent investigation; (4) the magnitude of "learn-ing-by-exporting" effect is heterogeneous among firms with different level of export intensity, and it also varies along a U-shape curve with the increase of export intensity; (5) the magnitude of "learning-by-exporting" effect is heterogeneous among different industries, and in some industries the effect doesn’t exist; (6) industry agglomeration of exporters not only increases their total factor productivity (TFP), it also increases the magnitude of the "learning-by-exporting" effect; (7) while the R&D investments made by firms have general TFP-promoting effect, but these R&D investments don’t have a positive impact on the magnitude of the "learning-by-exporting" effect.The conclusions of this paper, to some extent, reflect that while the rapid expansion of China’s exports provides an important external driving force for macroeconomic growth, its effect in promoting domestic technological progress and improving produc-tion efficiency may be relatively limited. This requires China to accelerate the industrial transformation and upgrade, to adjust part of its policies that make excessive emphasis on the incentives of export expansion, and to maintain the sustainability of its export competitiveness and economic growth through the continuous improvement of product quality and the elevation of its position on the Global Value Chain.