产品生命周期、产品质量提升与中国出口市场演进

Product Cycle,Product Quality Improvement and Export Market Evolution of China

全球化背景下的产品生命周期过程对中国出口贸易的发展具有重要意义。通过构建企业产品质量和出口市场选择模型,文章分析了产品生命周期背景下中国由产品质量提升所致的出口市场由南方国家向北方国家转移的演进过程。在中国承接国际生产的初期,由于较高的质量生产成本①使得企业只能以低质量产品向南方国家出口。随着产品生命周期背景下国际间知识溢出和技术的扩散,质量生产成本不断下降,企业逐渐在后期能够以高质量产品向北方国家出口以获取更高利润。文章借助于三重差分方法以及新产品相较于旧产品差异化的演进过程,在控制其他因素的基础上,识别产品生命周期的影响,以实证结果支持了理论模型的推论。

The process of product cycle under the background of globalization is of great significance to the development of China’s export trade. By constructing a simple model about the selection of product quality and export market by firms,this paper analyses the export market evolution from the south countries to the north countries due to the improvement of the product quality in the context of product cycle. In the early stage of China undertaking international production transfer,due to the high cost of production related to product quality,firms can only export to the south countries with low quality products. Thanks to the international knowledge spillover and technology diffusion in the process of product cycle,the cost of production related product quality continues to decline,firms are gradually able to export high quality products to the north countries in the later period of product cycle process for more profit,thus realizing the evolution of China’ s export market. By conducting difference-in-difference estimation and comparing different evolution of new product with that of old product,the effect of product cycle is identified with other factors controlled. The empirical results support the inference of the theoretical model.