Growing like China: Firm performance and global production line position

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chor, Davin; Manova, Kalina; Yu, Zhihong
• 署名单位: Dartmouth College; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of London; University College London; Centre for Economic Policy Research - UK; University of Nottingham
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF INTERNATIONAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-1996
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jinteco.2021.103445
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: global value chains; Production line position; Upstreamness; firm heterogeneity; Firm lifecycle; CHINA

摘要

Global value chains have fundamentally transformed international trade and development in recent decades. We use matched firm-level customs and manufacturing survey data, together with Input-Output tables for China, to examine how Chinese firms position themselves in global production lines and how this evolves with productivity and performance over the firm lifecycle. We document a sharp rise in the upstreamness of imports, stable positioning of exports, and rapid expansion in production stages conducted in China over the 1992-2014 period, both in the aggregate and within firms over time. Firms span more stages as they grow more productive, bigger and more experienced. This is accompanied by a rise in input purchases, value added in production, fixed costs incurred, and profits. We rationalize these patterns with a stylized model of the firm lifecycle with complementarity between the scale of production and the scope of stages performed. (c) 2021 Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).