(Correspondent: Wang Tianjian) Recently, the paper “Export Capacity Constraints and Distortions”, co-authored by Doctor Feng Xiao and Professor Wang Yongjin from our school and Professor Zhao Laixun from Kobe University, Japan, was published in the 157^th volume of Journal of Development Economics, an authoritative journal of economics. The paper investigates how export capacity constraints (ECCs) affect resource misallocation and aggregate productivity by distorting the firm's export mode. Using unique datasets in China, the authors first document a number of observed patterns for the so-called “dual-channel exporters”, which export only a fraction of their products directly with the rest via intermediaries. They show that introducing capacity constraints reconciles the theory with the observed patterns in the data. Their quantitative exercise suggest that removal of the ECCs leads to gains of 2.27% in aggregate productivity, 4.97% in total exports and 0.37% in national welfare. This research brings great policy enlightenment on how to improve a country’s infrastructure construction and deal with the shortage of containers and port congestion since the outbreak of the pandemic.

Journal of Development Economics is widely recognized as an international authoritative journal in the field of development economics. It is identified as a level-A foreign language academic journal by the school’s discipline of economics.

Link of the paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304387822000542