Abstract: Faced with the rise of anti-globalization forces and the trade war between China and the United States and other grim international trade situation, the uncertain factors in the foreign trade of export-dependent firms are increasing. Based on the perspective of external demand shock, this paper studies the impact of various factors on the property insurance demand of China’s export-dependent firms, which not only provide theoretical reference for the research on property insurance demand of export-dependent firms, but also provide empirical evidence for the purchase of property insurance of export-dependent firms. This paper innovatively analyzes the internal mechanism of firm property insurance demand from the perspective of external demand shock and puts forward relevant hypotheses, and constructs panel random effect Tobit model for an empirical test, and uses poisson regression and negative binomial regression models for an endogeneity test. It is found that the larger of the external demand impact, the smaller of the property insurance demand of export-dependent firms and the higher the interest cost, the higher the income tax rate, the lower the profitability the more the possession of tangible assets, the greater the demand of export-dependent firms to buy property insurance. Sub-sample regression results confirm that: Compared with non-state-owned export-dependent firms, property insurance demand of state-owned export-dependent firms is affected more significantly by the impact of external demand; Compared with the eastern core zone, export-dependent firms in the non-eastern core zone are affected more significantly by the impact of external demand.

Key words: uncertainty factor, export-dependent firms, external demand shock, property insurance requirements