Analyzing export product quality in the context of enterprise competition: The role of anti-monopoly law implementation

This study investigates the effects of China’s Anti-Monopoly Law on the quality of exported products, focusing on enterprise competition dynamics. A DID approach is employed, utilizing comprehensive micro-matched data from the China Industrial Enterprise Database and the Customs Database, covering the period from 2004 to 2013. The findings indicate that the implementation of the AML has significantly intensified market competition, leading to a reduction in quality disparities between small and medium-sized enterprises and larger companies. Extensive robustness checks, including parallel trend analysis, PSM-DID, placebo tests, Heckman tests, and the exclusion of anticipated effects, consistently validate these results. The policy has notably decreased the export quality gap among large, medium-sized, and monopolistic firms. Moreover, heightened competition has driven increased ownership diversity, which has narrowed quality differences between private and foreign-invested enterprises. This convergence is particularly prominent in both technology-intensive and labor-intensive sectors, where quality disparities between experimental and control groups have diminished. Further analysis of the policy’s transmission mechanisms reveals that enhanced competition, combined with changes in market structure and firm-level innovation, has significantly contributed to these improvements. These findings underscore the broader implications of antimonopoly regulations in promoting equity in export quality across enterprises of varying sizes, ownership structures, and sectors.