Estimation of export cutoff productivity of Chinese industrial enterprises

Abstract

Based on China’s transaction-level trade data and firm-level production data during the period 2000–2006, this paper firstly estimates the export cutoff productivity by applying nonparametric ROC method. The results are as follows. First, under the full sample, the export cutoff productivity is 7.051. Second, the export cutoff productivity of home enterprises is relatively low, and that of foreign enterprises is relatively high. Third, the export thresholds of capital-intensive and technology-intensive industries are relatively high, while that of labor-intensive industry is relatively low. Fourth, the export threshold of western provinces is relatively high, followed by central provinces and eastern provinces. In addition, this paper investigates the dynamic change of export threshold. The result indicates that the evolution of export threshold is generally a horizontal S-shape during the sample period, and after China’s accession to WTO in 2001, it is an inverted U-shape.