High- and new-technology enterprise certification, enterprise innovation ability and export product quality

This paper takes the China high- and new-technology enterprise (HNTE) program implemented in 2008 as a quasi-natural experiment. Difference-in-differences (DID) estimate with matching data from the China Industrial Enterprise Database, the China Customs Database and the HNTE Certification Database for 2006–2010 is used to study the impact of HNTE certification on enterprises’ export product quality. The results show that, overall, HNTE certification promotes the upgrading of export product quality. Moreover, the improvement of innovation ability brought by HNTE certification is an important channel to promote such upgrades. A series of robustness tests also confirm the above conclusions. In addition, heterogeneity analyses are conducted based on the enterprise size, ownership and trade mode, respectively. The results show that the mechanism by which HNTE certification policy promotes export product quality through the improvement of enterprise innovation ability is more significant in non-SOEs and general trading enterprises.