| As our society moves into the so-called post-industrial age or internet age when the economy growth is greatly driven by innovation and creativity, the creative industries as a new emerging sector are rapidly growing in the world. Creativity as the most important elements for the development of creative industries is more likely to concentrate in some regions than other economic factors, such as land, capital, and labors. Creative industries agglomeration (CIA) is becoming an important feature of world and China’s industrial development.The fast emerging of creative industries has lead to lots of studies, but the investigation on externality of the CIA is highly under-documented empirically in literatures. Furthermore, some scholars capture the effects of economic growth and/or employment growth driven by the CIA, but they neglect the effects of innovation and productivity increase. In this paper, we focus on three research questions:(a) Whether the CIA impact on the productivity of creative industries,(b) Whether and how the CIA effect on regional innovation.(c) Whether and how the CIA influence on regional total factor productivity (TFP) growth. We try to open the "black box" of the economies of agglomeration of creative industries by responding to these questions.This research includes four main issues.(1) To analyze the world development and structure of creative industries. Firstly, the development of creative industries in the world, including the import and export trade, is explored. Secondly, we investigate the increase of size and speed in sub-creative sectors in China. Thirdly, the clustering of creative industries at provincial level is investigated in China. This section facilitates to understand the development and structure of world and China’s creative industries, and it also provides some evidences for exploring to the effects of the CIA.(2) To investigate the effect of the CIA on the productivity of creative industries. Firstly, an estimation model is used to calculate the productivity of China’s creative industries. Secondly, the clustering and productivity of creative industries is analyzed comprehensively. Thirdly, an econometric model is established to analyze whether the CIA impact on the creative industries productivity. The conclusion is conducted lastly.(3) To explore the impact of the CIA on regional innovation. Firstly, four hypotheses of the CIA impacting on regional innovation are provided based on the perspective of innovation chain, where the innovation effects are distinguished as two parts:upstream effect and downstream effect. Secondly, an econometric model is established to test the upstream and downstream effects. After using sensitivity analysis and regressions by different sample, it shows that four hypotheses are robust and statistically reconfirmed. The conclusion and implications are conducted finally.(4) To discuss the influence of the CIA on regional TPF growth. Firstly, the DEA-Malmquist tool is applied to estimate China’s TFP change during the period of1990to2010. Secondly, an empirical model is created to estimate the spatial agglomeration effects of creative industries on regional TFP growth, and the empirical results are disscussed. Lastly, it concludes and provides implications.The respondings to the research questions facilitate to form a whole analytical framework to explore whether and how the economics of agglomeration of creative industries happen. It falls into the broad area of economic geography, economics of creativity, and regional science. Specifically, the contributions include three aspects.(1) The doctoral dissertation is the first attempt to analyze the productivity effect of the CIA empirically. This analysis can fill the gaps of current studies neglecting externality driven by the CIA in creative industries, and it also provides the empirical support to the discussion of industrial externalities of the CIA.(2) Based on the theory of innovation chain, the innovation effects caused by the CIA are divided as two parts:upstream innovation effect (R&D innovation effect) and downstream innovation effect (value added effect). This study is helpful to capture the interdisciplinary research field between regional science and agglomeration economics, and it also provide the empirical support to the discussion of regional externalities of the CIA.(3) The paper is also the first attempt at empirically analyzing the TFP growth effects of the clustering of creative industries. The empirical model provided in this paper can facilitate to investigate ways in which creative industries clustering may influence TFP growth. This study presents a new perspective in explaining why different regions possess different TFP growth across China, and also provides the empirical support to China’s government on how to upgrade traditional industries and then increase regional innovation and productivity. |
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