A Review of Foreign Research in Export Sophistication

Export sophistication is a multilevel concept.The nation-level export sophistication reflects the export structure of a country while export sophistication of an industry or a product,to some extent,indicates its technology level and the status in the international division.Researches on export sophistication are of far reaching importance in analyzing export structure,international division of work,international distribution of productivity and national export competitiveness.In recent years,the issue of export sophistication has been widely investigated theoretically and empirically by researchers worldwide and they focus especially on China’s sophistication of exports.This paper reviews from a multi-dimensional perspective the foreign literatures on the definition,measurement,Rodrik Paradox,and the inner mechanism of export sophistication and evaluates the present foreign researching.