Multiple Heterogeneities,Firms' Spatial Dispersion And Industrial Agglomeration

Manufacturing has the basis effects on our economic development. Economic reform has lasted for more than three decades, a vast amount of large enterprises with technical advantages in China have been accumulated during a long-term and rapid development of manufacturing.Increasing enterprises have broken up original geographical restriction to conduct cross-regional strategy under constraints of changing demand structure and rising factor cost. Thus different functional divisions located separately in space. When these phenomena gradually become a trend,spatial behavior concerns not only companies' growth but it is also important micro-foundation of industrial agglomeration and transfer under the new situation. In particular, if cross-regional enterprises are members of certain industrial clusters, their spatial behavior may bring about factor and resource's cross-regional flowing,give rise to industrial chains' spatial dispersion and division among clusters, and therefore might have profound effects on regional economic development and allocations of production factors. In addition, for labor force is the complicated and crucial factor,with assumptions of heterogeneity and dual-expectations, spatial preference of different divisions,in fact, may imply the matching of labor force's individual preference and urban distinctions, as well as urbanization's leading role of industrial agglomeration and regional economic growth.Therefore, researching on firms' spatial dispersion and the agglomeration of heterogeneous labor force can contribute to comprehend new characteristics and structure of industrial agglomeration in new period, provide reference in how to take advantage of interaction with new industrialization and urbanization to improve regional coordinate development from the micro-perspective.This paper expanded micro-economic entities'social attributes and generalized transportation cost from firms' cross-regional micro-behavior, concerning "micro-heterogeneity turn" in the researching of agglomerating mechanism in recently new economic geography. In theoretical research, this paper has reviewed the literature, analyzed and developed the mechanism of industrial agglomeration in new economic geography, expanded traditional transportation cost focusing on geographical proximity to technical proximity between enterprises from the insight of two dimensions: economic and knowledge relations. From the perspective of multiple heterogeneity ( enterprises, locations and labor force) , several issues have been discussed and explained: cross-regional characteristics and industrial agglomeration with the sample of listed companies in manufacturing; firms' heterogeneity and location conditions' impacts on their cross-regional decisions; geographical proximity and technical proximity, which one has greater influence? Have bidirectional layout and spatial correlations among different divisions and labor force existed and how they formed? Whether heterogeneous labor force segmented in space? If the matching of heterogeneous labor force's spatial preference and urban location factors can interpret the duality of material and spirit needs with labor force's expected utility? What about distribution of different labor force's spatial effects on regional economic growth? Finally,firms'cross-regional development's internal mechanism of "motivation-behavior-effect" has been concluded.In empirical research, combining Chinese industrial enterprise database and annual reports of public companies in manufacturing, this paper has established public companies database including 3406 public manufacturing firms and their subsidiaries as samples involving 15 industries, 31 provinces and municipalities and 277 cites at the level of prefecture or above. Firstly,this paper adopted several methods to calculate and analyze agglomeration degree and characteristics of manufacturing firms with their subsidiaries ( R&D focused and production focused); Secondly, conditional logistic regression were utilized to analyze influences of firm features, factors, market capacity, government expenditure and the service on firms' spatial dispersion decision, especially the comparison of geographical proximity and technical proximity;Thirdly, spatial auto-correlation indices ( Moran's I and Gi ) were adopted to evaluate firms'bi-directional agglomeration. R&D and production units' spatial connection has been explored by multivariate spatial auto-correlation approach in Yangtze River Delta; Finally, this paper used revised E-G similarization index of industrial structure and spatial econometric model to explore heterogeneous labor's spatial segmentation,spatial correlation between heterogeneous labor's location choice and urban regional conditions, and factor agglomeration's spatial spillover effect.Based on theoretical and empirical research, this paper came to conclusions below:1. At the micro level, cross-regional enterprises have certain regularities in industrial characteristics, firm heterogeneity and location influences. (1) General agglomeration characteristics: compared to labor-intensive and resource-intensive industries, the distribution of production and R&D divisions followed the principle of geographical proximity better with firms in technology-intensive industry; (2) Firm heterogeneity: enterprises with larger size, greater pressure on factor cost, more knowledge workers are more likely to implement spatial dispersion strategy; (3) Enterprises with higher R&D input may not choose spatial dispersion strategy reflecting the worry about risks of technology and knowledge spillover; (4) For regional factors,firms' cross-regional decision are market, factors and governmental orientation, especially the labor force; (5) Different from production units, R&D units are inclined to be located in cites with higher development level of service, abundant knowledge labor force and closer to the headquarters, more sensitive to spatial distance, but production units' location choice can be influenced more by labor cost and land price; (6) Effects of two proximities: geographical proximity have a greater impact on spatial dispersion strategy than technical proximity, it can also make technical proximity work because of knowledge externalities' geographical distance constraint.2. From the perspective of industrial chain, the spatial agglomeration of different divisions in manufacturing exhibits obviously bidirectional: general labor (production units) are inclined more to accumulate in the periphery, and knowledge labor (R&D units) remain concentrate in core areas,cross-district division of manufacturing chain has become distinctive. On the other hand, spatial correlation between R&D and production units is significant in a certain geographic area (such as Yangtze River Delta region). Increasing factor costs, geographical constraint of knowledge sharing and transferring, dual-expectations of labor force make knowledge activities and labor's spatial distributions bound by geographic proximity, with obvious trait of "production dispersing and R&D concentrating". In Yangtze River Delta, the spatial agglomeration of different divisions(R&D and production units) follow the rule of geographic proximity and couple together in space with"x" shape. From the insight of regional industrial division and relevance, cities in Yangtze River Delta have been divided into four zones: leading, coupling, marginal and connecting zone.These zones also presented the coexistence of spatial dispersion and correlation in industrial agglomeration.3. Under the background of cross-regional strategy, spatial segmentation degree of heterogeneous labor force can be exacerbated as the extension of geographical space. Spatial disposition level of labor force has been proved to be relevant to urban conditions. Knowledge workers' requirements from spiritual aspects were higher, the quantity of advanced human capital played a significantly spatial spillover effect on regional economic growth compared to general one. Therefore the loss of talent has a significantly negative effect on economic growth in the periphery, while the influx of general labor may have little impact on industrial transformation in secondary regions. Bidirectional agglomeration may intensify regional economic divergence.Finally, based on research results, conclusions and implications of these findings were also discussed, and this paper also provides suggestions which are people and enterprise oriented,united with "human- firm- industry- space" and matching new industrialization with urbanization to promote the manufacturing's upgrading and coordinated development of the regional economy.Indeed, due to the researchers' academic level, there are still many limitations in theory construction, study contents and methods application which have been discussed at the last part of this paper and can be future research directions.