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Are US Exports Different from China’s Exports? Evidence from Japan’s Imports
Author(s) -
Kiyota Kozo
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
the world economy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.594
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1467-9701
pISSN - 0378-5920
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-9701.2010.01295.x
Subject(s) - china , international trade , product (mathematics) , international economics , economics , quality (philosophy) , chinese market , business , geography , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , archaeology , epistemology
Are US exports different from China’s exports? If so, how? This article attempts to answer this question, using product‐level manufacturing import data from Japan. To make the comparison clear, this article also examines exports from the EU. The results indicate that more than 85 per cent and 83 per cent of products exported by the US and the EU, respectively, to Japan are also commonly exported from China. Both the US and the EU export products are priced higher than China’s export products, regardless of industries. This result suggests that quality differences matter in explaining the high overlap of China’s export products with US and EU export products. In some industries, however, the price differences of US and EU exports relative to China’s exports are relatively small. This result implies that either Chinese firms are upgrading the quality of their products, or US and EU firms are improving their efficiencies such that they can compete with Chinese firms.