EXPORTING AND FIRM PERFORMANCE:CHINESE EXPORTERS AND
THE ASIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS



Albert Park, Dean Yang, Xinzheng Shi, and Yuan Jiang*

R. Ford School of Public Policy and Department of Economics, University
of Michigan, Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development,
and National Bureau of Economic Research; Shi: School of Economics
and Management, Tsinghua University; and Jiang: National Bureau
of Statistics, China.
We thank Liu Fujiang of the Chinese National Statistical Bureau and
Bao Shuming of the University of Michigan’s China Data Center for their
support. We have valued feedback and suggestions from Andy Bernard,
Alan Deardorff, Juan Carlos Hallak, Pravin Krishna, Jim Levinsohn, Marc
Melitz, Roberto Rigobon, Jim Tybout, and seminar participants at George
Washington University, Georgetown University, Johns Hopkins School for
Advanced International Studies, London School of Economics, Pennsylvania
State University, University College London, University of Quebec
at Montreal, University of Southern California, the World Bank, and the
NBER conference “Firms and the Evolving Structure of Global Economic
Activity.”

Abstract—We ask how export demand shocks associated with the Asian
financial crisis affected Chinese exporters. We construct firm-specific
exchange rate shocks based on the precrisis destinations of firms’ exports.
Because the shocks were unanticipated and large, they are a plausible
instrument for identifying the impact of exporting on firm productivity and
other outcomes. We find that firms whose export destinations experience
greater currency depreciation have slower export growth and that export
growth leads to increases in firm productivity and other firm performance
measures. Consistent with “learning-by-exporting,” the productivity impact
of export growth is greater when firms export to more developed
countries.