Economic agglomeration and product quality upgrading: evidence from China

ABSTRACT Based on merged custom import and export data and Chinese industrial enterprise data, this paper studies the influence of economic agglomeration incurred by urbanization in China on the products’ quality upgrading. We find that economic agglomeration can improve the product quality of Chinese enterprises. We further show that in the context of deepening trade liberalization, economic agglomeration leads enterprises to import more various intermediate products, thus helping to upgrade the quality of final products. The increase in the proportion of intermediate products imported from high-income countries will strengthen the role of economic agglomeration in upgrading the quality of products.