The impact of spatial agglomeration on export of forest products manufacturing in China: evidence from enterprises' data

Industrial spatial agglomeration is an important feature of modern industry development; however, little academic attention has been paid to the impact of industrial spatial agglomeration on the export of enterprises. Based on a large sample from a Chinese industrial enterprise database, this paper applies the EG index method to measure the spatial agglomeration level of forest products' manufacturing and further explores its impact on exports. The results show that the spatial agglomeration level improved slightly in China's forest products' manufacturing during 1999-2009. However, the spatial agglomeration level of China's forest products' manufacturing is lower than is the average level of the total manufacturing industry. The regression results show that the level of spatial agglomeration has a significant positive impact on the export of enterprises in China's forest products' manufacturing industry. This may imply that the spatial agglomeration effect has not yet been fully exploited, and the level of spatial agglomeration in China's forest products' manufacturing industry needs to be further improved.