Multinationals'Quality Advantage and the Quality Upgrading of Host Country:A Quantitative Assessment on China's Openness
Based on the Chinese firm-level data,this paper first documents a stylized fact that af-ter controlling for observed firm characteristics,including total factor productivity(TFP),the export quality of foreign multinationals is still significantly higher than that of the Chinese domes-tic firms.Then,this paper incorporates this stylized fact into a quantifiable general equilibrium model with multinational firms and endogenous quality,and uses this model to quantify the effects of foreign multinational firms on the quality upgrading of Chinese exports and the increase of welfare level in China.The research findings are as follows.During 2001-2007,the entry of foreign multinationals improved the Chinese export quality by 1.29%and raised the Chinese wel-fare level by 22.40%.If the multinationals'quality advantage is eliminated,the entry of foreign multinationals during 2001-2007 would only improve the Chinese export quality by-0.11%and raised the Chinese welfare level by 4.30%.Therefore,accurately measuring multinationals'quality advantage is crucial in assessing the quality and welfare effects of China's opening up to the outside.
万方数据
