Research On Changing Trend Of Guangdong's Manufacturing Industrial Agglomeration Degree And Its Affecting Factors

The research on industrial agglomeration is one of the most important subjects of Regional Economics and Industrial Organization. It has fascinated economists and geographers alike. More recently, the empirical research of the domestic corcerning industrial agglomeration has made rapid progress, but most of them still stay at the national level and study at district level has lagged behind. For instance, the exsiting research results on Guangdong Province has a few flaws: first,it can not reflect the latest developments and changes after 2005; second, the measure index used by exsiting research does not control for industrial concentration; third, most research is only descriptive analysis,which can not reveal influence factor and formation mechanism. Based on the data collected in"Guangdong Statistics Year Book"and"China City Statistical Yearbook", this paper measures the agglomeration degree and changing trend of Guangdong province's thirty two-digit manufacturing industries in municipal scale from 1995 to 2007 by means of the index of industry concentration constructed by Ellision and Glaeser,Gini indices and concentration degree of the regions whose manufacture sales incomes rank the top five. According to the theoretical analysis, we establish econometric model ,exploring the causes of industry agglomeration in Guangdong Province.This paper is divided into four parts. The first part is the basic theory and literature review. We summarize the results of previous studies,explain the theory of indusrial agglomeration briefly. Building on Duranton and Overman (2005), we divide the agglomeration index into four categories, laying the foundation for the following study.The second part measures the agglomeration degree of Guangdong's 30 manufacturing industries from 1995 to 2007. Besides, this paper analyzes the changing trend of regional industrial agglomeration. The results indicate that:firstly,the overall agglomeration degree of Guangdong's manufacturing industry is quite high, the weighted average EG coefficient of 30 two-digit manufacturing industry reach to 0.11 in 2007. Secondly,there is a big difference in agglomeration degree,some industrical are agglomerated especially those resource-intensive industries and hi-tech industries. Thirdly, Guangdong's industrial agglomeration degree has continuously risen between 1995 and 2006, but experienced a slight drop in 2007. Specifically, degree of agglomeration in most industries increased substantially. On the other hand,some labor-intensive industries have emerged a downward trend in recent years. Fourthly, many of Guangdong's manufacturing industries are highly geographically concentrated in the Pearl River Delta region. Fifthly The whole manufacturial distribution of the province appear to be on the downside of the upside down U curve, the main direction of dispersion is from the east coast region of the Pearl River estuary to a small number of surrounding cities.The third part explores the causes of industry agglomeration in Guangdong Province using the panel data during 2001—2007 based on the classical trade theory, the classical location theory, the new trade theory and new economic geography as well as the government factors framework.The main finding is that Industrial agglomeration is the result by united function of nature advantage,agglomeration economies and the government behavior,emphasizing any of these factors alone is unadvisable.The forth part is the the conclusions and policy suggestions.