The Export Trade And The Manufacturing Industrial Productivity

As a major exporter in the world, there is no doubt that the contribution of export trade, especially in the manufacturing sector accounted for more than 95 percent of export, to China’s economic growth is really great. However, whether exports can promote the sustainable growth of China’s economy is a controversial topic. If the answer is yes, then the export-oriented strategy is a reasonable and effective national development strategy. In view of this, this paper uses 27 manufacturing sub-sectors from 1997 to 2010 data to estimate the non-parameter DEA-Malmquist productivity index, as well as the capital productivity and labor productivity. By studying the relationship between the three indicators of productivity and exports, using dynamic panel GMM and instrumental variable method, this paper empirically analyzes the influence of exports on the manufacturing industrial productivity respectively from the overall and industry-level groups. We find that, during the study period, the overall production efficiency of manufacturing industry has increased, and the technological advancement has made the largest contribution to total factor productivity. But the phenomenon of irrational resources allocation, excess capacity and other efficiency waste still exits. Thanks to the stronger ability of imitation and absorption to the new technology, as well as the increasing exports of high-tech products, the production efficiency of capital and technology intensive industry upgrades faster than labor intensive industry. Through empirical analysis, we draw the following conclusions. (1) From the overall level, the export trade has no positive effect on the TFP growth, but promotes the capital and labor productivity. This tells us the economic growth pattern driven by exports is still extensive form, and whether the export-oriented development approach can achieve sustainable growth of productivity is questionable. (2) From the industry-level groups, for the labor intensive industry, the impact of exports on TFP is negative; for the capital and technology intensive industry, the negative effect isn’t significant. This means that, although they are both in the low-end value chain, the export of the capital and technology intensive products bring much more benefit in the acquisition of technology spillover and promotion of industry innovation and production frontier than the labor intensive products. (3) Compared the impact of exports to different destinations on productivity, we find that the exports to developed countries and regions are conducive to TFP and capital productivity growth, while the exports to emerging-market and other less developed countries have a negative influence on TFP and capital productivity. The result shows that choosing different export destination brings different benefits, our country need to emphasize the exchanges and cooperation with advanced countries and enterprises. (4) The influence of industry R&D investment proportion and foreign investment on labor productivity is negative or not significant, especially in labor-intensive industries. The reason may be that, the employment population is dominated by physical labor, which limits the absorptive capacity to foreign advanced technology.