Research on the promoting effect of servitization on export technological sophistication of manufacturing enterprises

Abstract

Based on multiple micro databases involving Chinese manufacturing enterprises and World Input-Output Database, this article investigates the impact of China’s manufacturing servitization on export technological sophistication from 2000 to 2010. The results show that manufacturing servitization has an inverted U-shaped impact on export technological sophistication. From the perspective of heterogeneity at the enterprise level and industry level, manufacturing servitization has an inverted U-shaped impact on export technological sophistication for mixed trade enterprises, central and western located enterprises, domestic and foreign enterprises, and knowledge-intensive industries, the nonlinear impact is in the promotion range. Besides, manufacturing servitization with domestic and foreign service input source has an inverted U-shaped impact on export technological sophistication, manufacturing servitization with the domestic consumption-oriented service input source and foreign production-oriented service input source have a promoting effect. Servitization with financial industry and technical research and development service source has a promoting effect, while servitization with transportation service input source has an inverted U-shaped effect. Overall global value chain participation level and simple global value chain participation have a positive moderating effect on the impact, especially for enterprises with lower production efficiency. Mechanism analysis confirms that the "spillover" effect and "cost" effect are important channels for manufacturing servitization to promote export technological sophistication.