Research Of The Producer Service Clusters In Shanghai

With the experience from developed countries, there is an obvious trend that the producer service industry is becoming more and more concentrated in the cosmopolis cities and forms producer service cluster which make itself the new engine of economy growth. Shanghai is now working hard on its way to realize her strategy of becoming the international economic, financial, trade and shipping center. The strategy should be carried out by further developing corresponding industries, among which the boom of producer service industry is a must. The focus of this paper is to explore in a systematic way the mechanism of the producer service cluster. Two main aspects are concerned: 1) the theoretical research on the mechanism of the producer service cluster 2) the empirical research on the status quo of the development in terms of producer service clusters in Shanghai. The main theoretical achievements answer the question why producer service industry tends to form cluster and how, as well as what factors will have an impact on the process. Empirically, the main finding is producer service cluster do exist in Shanghai. Then the paper explains its positive but weak externality by taking advantage of the life cycle theory and mechanism analysis which come out with some policy proposals. Therefore, the research in this paper is significant both theoretically and practically.The paper in general is comprised of two main sections: the theoretical research section (Chapter 1,2,3) and the empirical research section (Chapter 4,5,6). Chapter one introduced the background and significance of the research, the contents concerned and the methods used, as well as the new ideas of the paper. After summarizing current literatures, Chapter two points out the lack of systematic research on the theory of producer service cluster. And the lack mainly lies in the theoretical research on mechanism of the producer service cluster as well as in the related model to measure it. The research structure of this paper comes in to shape by building on the lacks. Chapter three conducted a detailed analysis on the difference and relationship between"cluster"and"geographic concentration"in the first place and moves on to systemically explore the network nature of cluster on a micro level and the dynamics of cluster which is the cornerstone of cluster's"two-step model"proposed in this chapter. The producer service cluster is a typical knowledge-intensive industry which has many new characteristics from the knowledge economy perspective. With these characteristics, the paper discussed in-depth the mechanism of the producer service cluster using the cluster's two-step model. The main findings are 1) on a macro level, the producer service industry has significant trend to concentrate in cosmopolis cities, then gradually scatter within it and develop a interactive relationship with high-tech cluster in the city; 2) on a micro level, out of the needs of transformation between different types of knowledge, a new kind of research-based cooperative organization gradually comes into being among various producer service firms, whose basic characters agree with the those concluded as a cluster. Therefore, it proves the existence of producer service clusters theoretically. Chapter four discusses the identification of cluster by measuring the amount of a industry's externality and moves on to a detailed analysis on FB model, its applicability in measuring the externality of industries and the factors influencing it when measuring the externality of the producer service clusters. Chapter five includes an empirical research on the status-quo of producer service clusters in Shanghai. The result comes out as a strong proof that the producer service cluster do exist in Shanghai, but the externality of the clusters, though positive, is very weak. A further regression analysis shows that it depends largely on the effect of knowledge transformation. The last chapter concludes the achievements obtained, discusses the difficulties and problems encountered and finally puts forward some corresponding policy proposals.