Coagglomeration Of Distributive Trades And Manufacturing Industry Together With Its Export Spillover Effect:Mechanism And Empirical Tests

The phenomenon of industrial agglomeration has been a hot topic of Economics. There are two types of industrial agglomeration:one is a single industry group, another is multi industry mixed. The latter type is also known as the co-agglomeration, which is a focus of research in recent years in the field of New Economic Geography. Co-agglomeration can be defined in a lot of industrial levels. There exits the co-agglomeration of service industry and manufacturing industry in the large industrial level, then the next is the co-agglomeration of productive service industry and manufacturing industry, and the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing Industry belongs to the co-agglomeration of productive service industry and manufacturing industry, but there are few researches related to the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing Industry.On the other hand, the externality of agglomeration mainly expresses itself as the export spillover effects of industrial agglomeration based on the heterogeneity of enterprise in the field of international trade. But most studies only discuss the effects of single industrial agglomeration on the exports of enterprises, there is rare research involving the spillover effect of co-agglomeration on export. From the perspective of industry association and combined with China situations, this paper attempts to study the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry together with its spillover effect by theoretical analysis and empirical test. Its practical significance lies in the collaborative development of industries and promoting the exports of Chinese enterprises.From the theoretical perspective, the paper employs the costs of enterprises and the expected returns of regions as intermediate variables to discuss the inherent mechanism of the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry. This research is expounded from the following aspect:The agglomeration of manufacturing industry makes the expected returns of distribution enterprise rise, so as to promote the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry. Through theoretical derivation, the paper suggests that it is the motives of cost minimization and expected returns maximization that contribute to the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry. On the other hand, this paper also builds an extended model to explore the export spillover effect of industrial agglomeration involving the co-agglomeration factor. The model derives the following proposition:The co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry helps reduce the production costs and distribution costs of potential export manufacturers and increase its profit, thereby promote the export possibility and export ratio of enterprises.From the empirical aspect, this paper makes tests on the existence of co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry using Chinese panel data at area level and industry level. It attempts to find out the reasons of the co-agglomeration degree gaps in different regions, different industry segments through the empirical test at subdivision industry level. The test results of overall sample suggest the existence of co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry at the provincial and city level. But the test results of divided areas samples show that the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry is significant in the east but not significant in the central and west areas, and the different industry characteristic is the reason for gaps of co-agglomeration degree in different regions. The test results of sub-sectors industries samples indicate that there is strong co-agglomeration between distributive trades and the manufacturing industry that strongly dependent on distributive trades (such as textile industry), and exists week or no co-agglomeration between distributive trades and the manufacturing industry that does not rely too much on distributive trades but strongly depends on energy resources.Secondly, this paper conducts empirical tests on the export spillover effect of the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry using enterprise panel data of typical cities and sub-sectors industries. There are two aspects of the test, namely the effects of co-agglomeration on enterprises’ export decision making and on export ratio. In order to further research the impacts of co-agglomeration on manufacturing enterprises in sub-sectors industries or with different scales, the paper also makes empirical analysis with panel data of manufacturing sub-sectors and enterprises divided by scale. The results of overall sample show that the co-agglomeration of distributive trades and manufacturing industry is a significantly positive factor of manufactures’ export decisions making and export ratio. But the results of sub-samples indicate that the degree of impacts related to the manufacturing sub-sector and manufacturer scale, furthermore, it has no significant effect on large enterprises. The above empirical studies from two aspects not only verify the objective existence of co-agglomeration between distributive trades and manufacturing industry, but also prove the impacts of co-agglomeration on manufacturers’ export decision making and export ratio. This research is beneficial to realize the coordinated development of distributive trades and manufacturing industry, and is also expected to put forward policy suggestions for increasing Chinese enterprise’s export.