The Influence Of Firm Export Network On The Quality Tendency Of Firms’ Export Products

In recent years,in the face of fluctuations in the international trade market and the urgent need for transformation in the domestic market,how to improve the strategic position of Chinese export firms in the division of labor in the global value chain has attracted extensive research.In order to break through the low-end lock-in dilemma of the global value chain faced by Chinese firms’ export products,it is very necessary for us to promote the quality upgrade of export products,and the export network is an important carrier of the export scale and export experience of the enterprise.It is one of the important abilities that firms cannot ignore in the development process.Under the background of losing the traditional competitive advantage,the export network is expected to become a new driving force for improving the quality of Chinese firms’ export products.Therefore,it is very meaningful to study the influence of the firms’ export network on firms’ export competitiveness.Starting from the geographic distance and cognitive distance between products,based on the China Customs database and CEPII-BACI data from 2000 to 2015,this paper constructs indicators to measure the network and geographic network of firms’ export products,and calculates the quality tendency of firms’ export products.This paper empirically examines the effect of firms’ export network on firms’ export product quality tendency and the related mechanism.The empirical results show that:(1)The divergence of the export geographic network of Chinese firms can motivate firms to improve the quality tendency of their export products,while the divergence of the export product network of firms will inhibit the quality tendency of firms’ export products.(2)The divergence of the geographic network is to improve the product quality of the firm by improving the product quality and reducing the product price of the firm.In contrast,the divergence of the export product network of the firm will reduce the product quality of the firm and increase the unit price of the firm product,so that the firm will reduce the product quality tendency.(3)Mechanism analysis shows that this is because the divergence of the export geographical network of firms can encourage firms to enter more new markets,thereby producing the effect of high quality and low price of export products.In contrast,the divergence of the export product network of firms makes firms only consider the diversification of imported intermediate products,thus leading export firms to fall into the production mode of low quality and high price.