Globally, the vertical separation of industrial and value chains is key to achieving international division of labor.The prerequisite for ensuring the smooth advancement of this process is the establishment and implementation of “standards”. In the context of the new era, it is urgent need to further strengthen the development of the manufacturing industry. The establishment of standards is a critical tool for enhancing international market competitiveness, and countries with the authority to set standards often reap greater benefits within the global value chain division system. However, there islimitedliterature that examines the trade effects of industry standards from a microenterprise perspective, especially the impact of standard development on firms' export trade gains.
This paper based on the data of industrial enterprise data compiled by China's National Bureau of Statistics, trade data collected by China's General Administration of Customs, and China's industrial standards collected by Industrial Standard Consulting Network from 2000 to 2013. We explore the impact of industry standard construction on the export domestic value-added ratio of manufacturing enterprises and its mechanism.The results indicates that standard construction is helpful to improve domestic value-added ratio of export, and these results are robust when using alternative measures, excluding extreme value interference, and considering the endogeneity issues. In particular,the positive effect of standard construction on the domestic value-added ratio of manufacturing exports is mainly reflected in foreign-invested and processing trade enterprises, and the positive effect on the enterprises in the low domestic value-added ratio is more prominent than that of the enterprises with high domestic value-added ratio. Moreover, the trade welfare effect of standard construction is also observed across industries with different factor intensity.Further analysis shows that the positive impact of standard construction on the domestic value-added ratio of manufacturing export is primarily achieved by reducing enterprise costs, enhancing the market power of enterprises and increasing the intensity of domestic intermediate goods use.At the same time, whether enterprises participate in standard establishment, the transformation of export trade models, and the effect of market resource reallocation are also important factors influencing the export domestic value-added ratio.
This paper contributes to the existing literature in three aspects: First, we take a further step to explorethe impact mechanism of standard construction on the export domestic value-added ratio of China's manufacturing industry from the aspects of firm cost, market power and domestic intermediate goods input intensity. Second, different from the existing studies on standardization and standard governance focusing on using national-level or international standard data, we collate standards stock data at the manufacturing industry level. Third, we expand the analysis of the heterogeneous effects of standard construction on the export trade gains of Chinese micro-enterprises from multiple dimensions, including enterprise trade types, ownership types, and industry factor intensity. In further analysis, we examined the impact of whether enterprises participate in standard establishment, the conversion of export trade mode, and the effect of market resource reallocation effect on the export trade gains of manufacturing enterprises.
Our research, to a certain extent, reveals the internal mechanism of the establishment of standard to benefits the Chines enterprises gain in global production network trade. It emphasizes the critical role of standard establishment in supporting and guiding enterprise development, as well as enhancing the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry. The above conclusions provide important policy insights and practical guidance for constructing a standardized system that promotes high-quality trade development, and for actively implementing the strategic development of the National Standardization Administration to enhance the competitiveness of China's manufacturing industry through standard construction.