Financial Agglomeration, Spatial Spillover And Industrial Structure Upgrading

Post financial crisis era, Guangdong earlier entered a new normal. Standing at a new starting point, how to realize the economic transformation and upgrading, and foster a new economic growth point has become an important issue facing Guangdong. Finance is the core of modern economy, which have an important impact on the real economy, agglomeration of financial industry through its agglomeration effect and diffusion effect to upgrade the regional economic growth and industrial structure.Based on the excessive reading of relative literature, this paper sorts related researches on the financial cluster and the upgrading of the industrial structure, analyzing the mechanisms that the former exerts to the latter. We find that there are four mechanisms, including formation and allocation of capital, technological innovation, industrial integration and risk management. On the basis of theoretical analysis, we analyze the status quo of financial industry and industrial structure in Guangdong province after the reform and opening up. By introducing two index, location entropy and upgrading of an industrial structure coefficient, we carry out qualitative description and quantitative analysis on the status of financial cluster and industrial structure throughout Guangdong province. Then, we use panel data of 21 cities in Guangdong from 2000 to 2014, constructing a spatial econometric regression model, and empirically test the effect that financial cluster exerts on upgrading of an industrial structure. The results show that: First, industrial structures of cities and financial clusters among cities in Guangdong province present a positive spatial autocorrelation, which is strengthened as time goes on. Second, upgrading of an industrial structure shows an obvious spatial spillover effect(a positive impact from surrounding areas to local areas). Financial cluster significantly promotes the upgrading of industrial structure, to be specific, the promotion of banking industry is of significance whereas of insurance industry is not of insignificance. Third, industrial structure upgrading has obvious spatial spillover effect, and the upgrading of industrial structure in the surrounding areas will bring positive impact on the upgrading of industrial structure in the region. Fourth, considering the spatial weights of geographical distance factors, there is a significant positive spillover effect of financial agglomeration, the spatial spillover effect of the banking industry is positive, and the insurance industry is negative. After the inclusion of economic factors, the spatial spillover effect of financial agglomeration is not significant. At last, based on the conclusions above, we propose some suggestions on acceleration of the upgrading of the industrial structure of Guangdong province.