The Bias of Chinese Agricultural Enterprises’ Export: Profit Margin or Productivity?

ABSTRACT China's agricultural export has increased rapidly, but the export advantage has weakened. Agricultural enterprises (AEs) play a major role in China's agricultural export. Is there a bias in the export of AEs for improving either profit margin or productivity? The paper applies the panel data of Chinese AEs from 2014 to 2019 and uses the generalized method of moments and fixed effects (FE) model to test the impact of AEs’ export on profit margin and productivity. The results show that the productivity of Chinese agricultural export enterprises (AEEs) is significantly lower than that of agricultural non‐export enterprises (ANEs). The goal of AEs’ export is to increase profit margin rather than productivity; exports increase the profit margins of AEs, especially with a greater impact on the profit margin of low‐productivity AEs. The export scale has a higher impact on the profit margin of non‐continuous AEEs than that of continuous AEEs. However, the expansion of the export scale of AEs actually reduces their productivity. This study uses multiple methods to verify the robustness of the research conclusions.