The Influence Of Producer Services Agglomeration On Manufacturing Productivity

Manufacturing industry is the pillar and engine of national economic development.The economic growth and comprehensive strength of a country or region depend on the development of manufacturing industry to a large extent.The productivity of manufacturing industry reflects the development process and comprehensive strength of manufacturing industry of a country or region.Producer services are characterized by high added value,high knowledge content,high human capital and high agglomeration.Producer services have a high degree of cross-border services and spatial flow characteristics.Driven by informatization and market integration,the distribution of producer services at the provincial level shows an obvious agglomeration trend.From the perspective of international experience,producer services play an important role in promoting the development of manufacturing industry.However,under the background of capacity reduction and industrial structure upgrading at the present stage,China’s backward producer service industry can hardly meet the increasing service demand of the manufacturing industry.In addition,the agglomeration of producer services in China is not high enough to give full play to the effect of scale economy,which restricts the further improvement of manufacturing efficiency in China.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the agglomeration of producer services for the improvement of manufacturing productivity.This paper reviews the relevant theories and research status of producer services and manufacturing.Combining with previous studies,this paper divides the cluster of producer services into two modes: specialized cluster and diversified cluster,and analyzes the theoretical process of how the specialized or diversified cluster of producer services affect the productivity of manufacturing.On the basis of theoretical analysis,the panel data of 30 Chinese provinces from 2008 to 2017 are used for empirical analysis.First,producer services are subdivided into five subsectors.Location entropy and Herfindal index are used to calculate the degree of specialized and diversified cluster of producer services.DEA-Malmquist index is used to measure manufacturing productivity.Secondly,in order to study the linear effect of producer services agglomeration on manufacturing productivity,the fixed effect model is estimated by ordinary least square method with robust standard error.On the basis of the benchmark model,the heterogeneous models of east,central and west China and the heterogeneous models of five subsectors of producer services are constructed respectively.Finally,the threshold model is introduced to study the non-linear impact of producer services agglomeration on manufacturing productivity.The agglomeration degree of producer services and economic development level are taken as threshold variables respectively,and threshold values and the coefficient values of threshold interval are estimated.The results show that the specialization agglomeration and diversification agglomeration of producer services have significant and positive effects on manufacturing productivity.Among the three regions of China,the influence of producer services agglomeration on manufacturing productivity is obviously different.Among the subsectors of producer services,transportation,warehousing and postal services,financial industry,and scientific research,technical service and geological survey have significant promoting effects.Under different levels of agglomeration of producer services,the influence of specialized agglomeration on manufacturing productivity presents an "inverted u-shaped" curve,which first increases and then decreases,while the promotion effect of diversified agglomeration on manufacturing productivity keeps rising.Under different levels of economic development,the promotion effect of specialized agglomeration and diversified agglomeration on manufacturing productivity keep rising.