The effect of artificial intelligence application on the growth of exporting firms

The sample of this paper is set from 2008 to 2016, and 2008 is chosen as the starting year because the “2019 China Artificial Intelligence Industry Market Outlook Research Report” shows that Chinese patents in the field of artificial intelligence began to step into the development stage after 2007 (Yao, J. et al., 2024); the cut-off year to 2016 is because one of the important sources of data in this paper, “China Customs Import and Export Trade Database” is more complete before 2016, and the data updated after 2016 has too much missing information to meet the requirements of calculating foreign value added. The sample subject selects innovative enterprises with export business, and the reason for selecting innovative enterprises is that AI, as a cutting-edge innovative technology, its application and development require enterprises to have certain technological innovation capabilities and adaptability, innovative enterprises usually have strong R&D strength and technological reserves, and they are able to accept and apply AI technology more quickly, so as to seize the first opportunity in the new round of technological revolution, and these enterprises often have more flexible organizational structures and efficient decision-making mechanisms, and are able to quickly adjust their strategies and adapt to market and technological changes in order to better cope with the complex international market environment and intense competitive pressure, and to play an exemplary and leading role; and based on the basic consensus that the number of various types of patents is used to measure corporate innovation in previous studies, this paper screens innovative enterprises based on whether they apply for patents. The annual reports of listed companies are from the Sina Finance website; the import and export data of enterprises are from the China Customs Import and Export Trade Database; other basic information about listed companies is from the Cathay Pacific CSMAR Database, and the two databases are merged by referring to the relevant merging methods of Zhang J et al. (2013).