Industrial policy can promote economic growth and industrial upgrading by encouraging enterprises to adopt product switching. By utilizing comprehensive industrial policies and customs trade databases from 2000 to 2015, this paper found that firms with product ranges within policy-supported areas were more active in product switching. Among all the enterprises that adopted the product switching, those with nonmain products in policy-supported areas were more inclined to adjust their main product. They tended to transform nonmain product to main product as opposed to introducing new main product in order to effectively leverage their export experience and established technology. Whereas, for enterprises whose main product was within the policy-supported areas, their tendency to switch products significantly decreased. Mechanism analysis suggested that policy support, by alleviating industry distress and mitigating excessive market competition, encouraged firms to switch products to areas with policy backing. Moreover, we estimated trade performance after product switching from the perspective of product unit price and export product quality. We found that for firms whose main product was in policy-supported areas, such switching was more likely to result in “low price, high quality” exports, whereas for firms with nonmain products in supported areas, such switching was more likely to lead to “high price, low quality” exports, which indicates that firms switching to policy-supported areas need to continuously develop their core competencies and operate effectively to improve their production performance.

中文翻译：

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产业政策、产品转换和出口表现

产业政策可以通过鼓励企业进行产品转换来促进经济增长和产业升级。通过利用2000年至2015年的综合产业政策和海关贸易数据库，本文发现，产品范围属于政策支持领域的企业在产品转换方面更加积极。在所有采取产品转换的企业中，非主打产品属于政策支持领域的企业更倾向于调整主打产品。他们倾向于将非主要产品转变为主要产品，而不是引入新的主要产品，以有效利用其出口经验和现有技术。而主要产品属于政策支持领域的企业，产品转换倾向明显下降。机制分析认为，政策支持通过缓解行业困境、缓解市场过度竞争，鼓励企业将产品转向有政策支持的领域。此外，我们从产品单价和出口产品质量的角度估算了产品转换后的贸易表现。我们发现，对于主要产品在政策支持领域的企业，这种转换更有可能导致“低价、高质量”的出口，而对于非主要产品在支持领域的企业，这种转换更有可能导致“低价、高质量”的出口。 “高价格、低质量”的出口，表明转向政策支持领域的企业需要不断发展核心能力并有效运营，以提高生产绩效。