纵观经济发展史，保持制造业在全球范围的优势是推动主要发达国家经济发展的重要源泉。探寻制造业比较优势的形成机制，对发现经济增长的驱动力、制定产业政策、推动我国工业现代化建设均有重要意义。然而，由于缺少理论框架，现有研究无法对制造业显性比较优势进行机制探讨。本课题从理论与实证两方面系统分析影响制造业显性比较优势的重要因素，并研究各微观环节的相对作用。首先，借助模型我们将Balassa显性比较优势微观分解为“供给侧”和“需求侧”主要因素。“供给侧”因素囊括厂商生产成本、产品质量、产品多样性、产品差异化等微观机制；“需求侧”则包括消费目的地市场规模以及消费者偏好等因素。随后，我们将模型参数校准，利用理论结果量化各微观机制的相对作用。最后，我们将分解方法运用于探索影响中国城市和企业出口优势的因素、复杂经济学领域、提出“潜在比较优势”的统计度量。本课题对实现产业政策的普惠化、功能性具有重要意义。

Revealed comparative advantage has been an important measure of comparative advantage of an economy in a particular sector in the global market. As the pioneer and also the most widely used measure of comparative advantage, Balassa (1965)'s revealed comparative advantage (Balassa RCA) been applied in countless studies. However, as staggering as its explanatory power is, little has been known about the underneath factors influencing Balassa RCA due to its macro aggregation and mathematical non-separability. In this project, we aim to develop an analytically tractable framework that marries a full account of supply and demand factors to the global production network with a nested CES preference structure. The model provides a formula offering a simple and intuitive decomposition splitting Balassa RCA into contributions of a number of different micromechanisms. Based on the calibrated parameters and the decomposition, we study the relative importance of each margin to influence a country's comparative advantage. Finally, we apply the method to three applications. The first is to investigate factors that affect the exporting performance of Chinese regions and firms. In the second application, we apply the method to the field of economic complexity, where we study the relative importance of each margin embedded in economic complexity index (Hidalgo and Hausmann (2009)) to explain the differences in income and inequality across countries. In the third application, based on the decomposition, we propose the measure of "potential revealed comparative advantage", which aims to capture a country’s comparative advantage in the future given its current endowment structure and production technology. This research has important implications for industrial polices.