产品质量与企业出口决定:中国表现及演变动态

Product Quality and Firms' Export Decision:China's Performance and Dynamic Evolution

本文通过构建质量内生的异质性企业贸易模型,考察了产品质量在企业出口决定中的作用,得出了产品质量较高(较低)的企业倾向于选择出口(内销)的理论推论。之后采取世界银行提供的两个不同样本期的中国企业微观数据,对上述理论推论进行了验证。结果表明:入世前后产品质量较低的企业倾向于选择出口,而当前则表现为产品质量较高的企业更愿意出口,即产品质量对企业出口决定的影响呈现出由负向作用向正向影响演变的特征;内在机制可能是入世初贸易成本的降低、国内企业质量意识的增强、国外质量贸易壁垒和消费者质量需求的上升。进一步分行业考察发现,服务企业中产品质量相对较高的企业所占比重低于制造业企业,但在出口决定动态演变的特征方面与总体样本是一致的。不同的是,由于服务产品质量还涉及到消费质量维度,使得服务企业的产品质量(提供质量)在其出口决定中的作用不显著。

This article constructs quality-related heterogeneous-firm trade model to investigate the role of product quality in firms＇ export decision, and it is theoretically inferred that firms with higher product quality tend to export their goods while those with lower quality prefer to sell domestically. This inference is verified using Chinese firms＇ micro-data of two different sample periods pro-vided by the World Bank. The results show that the firms with lower product quality are more likely to export around the early 21st century, but at present those with higher product quality are more willing to export, which proves that the effect of product quality on firms＇ export decision has an evolutionary feature changing from the negative effect to positive one. The intrinsic mechanisms should include the decrease of trade cost at the beginning of China＇s entry to the WTO, the enhancement of quality consciousness of domestic firms, the increase of foreign quality trade barriers and consumers＇ quality demand. In the further investigation of different industrial sectors, it is found that the proportion of firms with excellent product quality is higher in manufacturing than that in ser- vice industry, but there is almost no difference in the characteristics of dynamic evolution of export decision with the whole sample. It is noted that because the product quality in service industry also involves consumption quality, there is no significant effect on export decision from the product quality （i.e. supply quality） in the service sector.