Abstract: In the current wave of the fourth industrial revolution, how to use new technologies to break the “low markup rate trap”faced by traditional manufacturing exports is an important issue to be solved to promote the high-quality development of China's trade. By integrating the matching data from the China Industrial Enterprise Database, the China Customs Database and the World Industrial Robot Database from 2006 to 2013, this paper explores the impact of industrial robot application on the markup rate of export enterprises and the intrinsic mechanism. The findings show that the application of industrial robots has significantly increased the markup rate of manufacturing export enterprises, and this conclusion still holds after a series of robustness tests, such as adjusting for sample selectivity bias and dealing with endogeneity. Industrial robot application mainly enhances the markup rate of exporting enterprises by increasing the price of export products and reducing labor costs. The results of the heterogeneity analysis show that industrial robot application has promoted the markup rates of most manufacturing export enterprises, especially for those in areas with higher aging levels or those of capital-intensive industries, non-state-owned enterprises and export enterprises after the financial crisis, which have a greater increase in their markup rates. Therefore, in order to enhance the transformation and upgrading of China's manufacturing exports and promote the high-quality trade development, it is of great significance to actively promote the popularization and application of industrial robots, reduce the application cost of industrial robots, and formulate policies tailored to different industries and enterprises with different ownership according to local and current conditions.

Key words: industrial robot application, exporter markup rate, price effect, labor cost effect