Abstract: The digital economy is increasingly becoming an important driving force for the high-quality development of foreign trade. Based on the heterogeneous enterprise theory framework, this paper constructs an endogenous selection model for enterprise export product quality, which includes the factors of digital economy development. It then interprets the internal mechanism of the impact of digital economy development on product quality upgrading, and it also tests the impact of digital economy development on export product quality by making use of the enterprise-product data from the customs database from 2007 to 2016. The findings show that, firstly, the development of the digital economy has significantly improved the quality of export products of enterprises. Secondly, the development of the digital economy exhibits different characteristics in terms of the impact on the quality of exported products due to the differences in factor density, geographical location, and enterprise nature. Among them, the development of the digital economy has mainly improved the quality of the export products of the enterprises, which are capital intensive, technology intensive, located in eastern regions, non-state-owned, and non monopoly. Thirdly, the channels of enterprise costs and enterprise productivity are important ways for the digital economy to play a role. The development of the digital economy can promote the quality of imported and exported products by reducing enterprise production costs and improving enterprise productivity. Fourthly, the development of the digital economy not only affects the quality of enterpriseexport products, but also further affects the internaladjustment of enterprise export product quality. Specifically, the improvement effect of the digital economy development on the quality of non core export products within enterprises is higher than that of core export products, which optimizes the efficiency of internal resource allocation of the export enterprises. The research conclusion provides a new perspective for China to build a strong trading country.

Key words: digital economy development, quality of export products, export product quality adjustment, resource allocation efficiency