Trade liberalization and export performance in China: Export-margin approach with firm-level data in 1995–2019

A key challenge facing developing countries is how to promote export performance through trade liberalization (TL). Using large and highly disaggregate firm-level data with 6-digit HS categories for 1995–2019, we investigate the issue for China based on the recent literature of export margins (XM). Export growth is decomposed into extensive and intensive margins (EM and IM), and IM further into price and quantity margins (PM and QM). We develop three empirical hypotheses based on a theoretical model that includes external economies of scale (EES) and industrial agglomeration (IA) as well as TL-XM links. Then we take China's entry to World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 as a quasi-natural experiment in difference-in-difference (DID) regressions. The estimate results suggest that TL increases both EM and IM (and QM) but reduces PM after China's entry to TWO in 2001. The finding is robust to various specifications of the empirical model and measurements of the variables. The further estimations show significantly positive effects of EES, IA, and their interactive terms with TL on EM, IM, and QM. The positive effects are larger for medium-tech industries than low-tech and high-tech industries.