| Trade plays an important role in driving economic growth.Over 40 years of reform and opening-up,China's export trade has grown at an average annual rate of 19.1%.With the amount of 4.16 trillion dollars in cargo trade,China has surpassed America and ranked first in global commodity trade in 2013.Rapid growing export has given impetus to the Chinese economic prosperity.However,Chinese trade structure gives priority to quantity but not quality during the rapid growth of trade.Chinese exporters participants in international division of labor mainly through OEM and processing trade,the technology contents of export products are relatively low.There's still a big gap between Chinese enterprises and other developed countries' companies in the aspect of independent innovation ability and R&D ability.Recently,the sluggish external demand and the disappearance of demographic dividend have led to the slowdown of exporting growth rate.On the background of new normal economy,Chinese government will not only stabilize the amount of trade but also promote the structure of exports and improve the technology content of exports.The export sophistication,an indicator of reflecting the exports technological content and an economic entity's position within the international division of labor,can reflect the technological content of a region in a better way.Therefore,researching on how to improve export sophistication is of important significance.Meanwhile,we can observe that the geographical agglomeration of Chinese economic development continues improving.Economic activities such as export are moving towards eastern areas.Most of the manufacturing enterprises are also concentrated in eastern areas.Researches about the improvement of geographical agglomeration on export trade abound both in theoretical demonstration and empirical test.On the basis of it,this paper further analyzes the mechanism of agglomeration's influence on export sophistication.On the basis of reviewing researches both at home and abroad,the paper measures the export sophistication of overall manufacturing industry,capital-intensive manufacturing and labor-intensive manufacturing for 31 provinces(municipalities)from 2002 to 2014 through applying the improved export sophistication measuring index.According to graphs,the paper carries out the comparison and analysis in different times and areas(three different areas and different provinces).The paper finds that the export sophistication of overall manufacturing and capital-intensive manufacturing is increasing.While labor-intensive manufacturing shows up downward trend for the most part.In general,the export sophistication of eastern areas is higher than western areas.However,the increase rate of the middle and western areas is obviously higher than the eastern areas.Furthermore,by measuring the level of geographical agglomeration in 31 provinces(municipalities)during the period of 2002-2014,the paper finds the agglomerations of eastern areas' industries are relatively high and the agglomerations in middle and western provinces are relatively low.But the agglomerations of eastern areas' provinces(municipalities)aren't all at high levels,such as Beijing and Hainan.Then,on the basis of model proposed by Krugman,by means of adding new variables and mathematical derivation,the paper deduces the formula of the improvement of agglomeration on export sophistication and elaborates the relationship between agglomeration and export sophistication through the perspective of theory model.At last,the paper makes empirical regression on the national level and sub-regional level by employing 2SLS from the perspective of factor intensity heterogeneity.By means of OLS,the paper carries out the robustness test and the test result supports the afore-mentioned conclusion of empirical analysis.The result shows that: Firstly,geographical agglomeration of the manufacturing industry notably improving the technological sophistication of exports in the manufacturing industry on the national level.However,after classifying the factor intensity,the paper finds that agglomeration significantly improving the export sophistication of capital-intensive manufacturing while no such influence in the labor-intensive manufacturing.Secondly,in different regions,the object of promotion by agglomeration is different.In the eastern areas,agglomeration notably improving the export sophistication of both the overall level and the capital-intensive manufacturing instead of the labor-intensive manufacturing.While in the western areas,agglomeration notably improving the export sophistication of labor-intensive manufacturing instead of the capital-intensive manufacturing.Thirdly,GDP per capita which denotes the development of economy slightly restrains the upgrade of export sophistication in the labor-intensive manufacturing.The reason possibly lies in the increasing labor costs caused by economic development,weakening the costs advantage of labor-intensive manufacturing.FDI improving the export sophistication of manufacturing industry in general.While in the middle and western areas,FDI embodies crowding-out effect by restraining the export sophistication of manufacturing industry at some level.The influence of infrastructure and R&D on export sophistication of manufacturing industry varies in different areas and different factor-intensity manufacturing industry.In general,both of them improve the export sophistication of manufacturing industry. |
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