Geographic Spillovers and Firm Exports: Evidence from China – HK Online Trade Seminar Series
Dr. Yue Yu
Assistant Professor
University of Toronto
This paper examines the importance of domestic economic geography in a country’s export performance. We first develop a simple model in which geographic integration of exporters reduces international trade frictions. We test the model predictions by leveraging the expansion of China’s high-speed rail (HSR) as a quasi-experiment to provide plausibly exogenous variation in the extent of (effective) geographic integration among Chinese exporters. The analysis reveals strong evidence supporting that the improved integration of exporters within the same sectors positively impacts a firm’s export performance both intensively and extensively. Additionally, we provide evidence consistent with the HSR connection strengthening knowledge spillovers among exporters to overcome information frictions in accessing foreign markets.
This is a joint seminar organized by HKU, CUHK, City U, HKUST and Lingnan U.
Please contact Xiameng PAN at xmpan@connect.hku.hk for registration.