中国农食产品标准国际化能否提升出口产品质量?

How Does the Internationalization of China’s Agri-food Product Standards Affect the Product Quality of Agri-food Firms’ Exports?

执行国际标准能够促进产品质量提升,但也会给企业带来过高的遵从成本,从而可能不利于企业产品质量的提升。选取2000-2013年中国农食产品标准数据与企业-产品层面海关数据,实证分析中国农食产品标准"国际化"对企业出口产品质量的影响。结果显示:从整体来看,标准"国际化"对企业出口产品质量效应显著为负,而我国自行制定的国家标准对质量影响显著为正;按照对国际标准采纳程度分类,以及对出口产品和出口目的国发展程度分类,分样本检验发现,标准"国际化"对企业出口产品质量存在异质性影响。为此,照搬发达国家主导制订的国际标准不适用于中国出口企业,可能会由于过高的遵从成本阻碍企业产品质量升级。另一方面,以中国为代表的发展中国家需积极参与到国际标准的制定中,从而减少过高遵从成本对产品质量升级及出口带来的不利影响。

On the one hand, international standards can be used as tools to help improve product quality, on the other hand, international standards also result in higher compliance costs for enterprises, which have negative effects on improving product quality. Using the matched data of China’s agricultural and food product standard data and Chinese customs data at the firm-product level for period 2000-2013, this paper investigates the effects of internationalization of China’s agricultural and food product standards on the product quality of agri-food firms’ exports. The results show that the internationalization of standards has a significant negative effect on the quality of firms’ export products, while China’s self-developed national standards have a significant positive effect on the quality of firms’ export products. The robustness of these results is verified by using different proxy variables of product quality and different sample processing methods. The heterogeneous effects of internationalization of China’s agricultural and food product standards on the quality of enterprises’ export products have been identified when the sample is split according to the classification of adoption degree of international standards as well as the export products and the development level of destination countries. The result shows that, international standards set by the developed countries do not fit Chinese export enterprises, which may hinder the upgrading of product quality due to excessive compliance costs. Developing countries, like China, should actively participate in the formulation of international standards to reduce the negative impact of international standards on product quality upgrading and exports due to excessive compliance costs.