互联网深化、信息不确定性与企业出口平稳性

互联网作为信息搜寻和传播的重要渠道,有利于缓解国际市场不确定性对企业出口决策的影响,从而有助于稳定企业出口预期,保障出口企业的持续生存。本文首先基于Fernandes 和 Tang(2014)的研究框架将互联网深化程度和出口集聚同时纳入到异质性贸易企业模型,在剥离出口集聚对企业出口行为影响的基础上,从理论视角揭示了互联网深化程度提高影响企业出口行为特别是出口持续生存的内在机理与方向。研究发现,不同于出口集聚会同时影响企业的需求冲击和成本冲击,互联网深化带来的信息溢出效应会通过贝叶斯法则(Bayesian Rule)使得企业修正其对国际市场不确定性的预期,提高其对目的国市场成本冲击的估计精度,从而在互联网深化程度较高的城市,企业进入出口市场的临界生产率较低,有利于其出口参与度和出口稳定性的提高。然而互联网深化程度提高不影响企业在目的国市场产品出口的集约边际。本文使用2000-2013 年中国工业企业数据库、中国海关数据库和中国城市统计年鉴数据库的匹配数据从企业-目的国-产品层面实证检验了本文的理论命题。研究表明,我国政府应充分发挥互联网发展降低信息不确定性的微观机制,以推动外贸的平稳增长。

Internet Penetration,Information Uncertainty,and Enterprise Export Stability

As an important tool to search and disseminate information, the Internet helps to moderate the impact of international market uncertainty on enterprise export decision-making, which is helpful to stabilize enterprise export expectations and guarantee the sustainable duration of export enterprises. This paper extends the research framework of Fernandes and Tang ( 2014) to include the Internet penetration and export agglomeration into the framework of the heterogeneous trade enterprise model. By separating the influence of export agglomeration on enterprise export behavior, the paper theoretically investigates the mechanism and direction of increased Internet penetration affecting enterprise export behavior, especially the export sustainable duration. In our setting, different from export agglomeration that affects both need shock and cost shock of enterprises, the information spillover effect of Internet penetration will make enterprises modify the expectations of international market uncertainty by the Bayesian Rule. For cities with high penetration of the Internet, enterprises will estimate the cost shock of the destination market more accurately, thus low critical productivity of enterprises entering the export market can improve export participation and export stability. However, the increased Internet penetration has no effect on the intensive margin of enterprises in the destination market. Using the matching data of the Chinese industrial enterprise database, Chinese customs database, and Chinese city statistical yearbook database from 2000 to 2013, the empirical results support the theoretical prediction on the enterprise, destination country, and product levels. Our paper implies that the Chinese government should take full advantage of the micro mechanism of the Internet reducing information uncertainty and promote the stable growth of foreign trade.