A Study Of The Relationship Between Convergence Behavior Of Neighbors And Firm Productivity

Based on the New New Economic Geography Theory,this paper examines carefully how convergence behavior of neighbors influence exporters' overall and individual productivity at town(village,street)scale.The result remains robust when we divide convergence behavior of neighbors into "technological innovation behavior" ? "commercial credit financing" ? "human capital investment behavior" and "contribution to social responsibility".The study finds that in agglomeration districts,the firms which have higher input level and higher convergent degree in technological innovation,human capital investment and contribution to social responsibility usually have productivity advantage.We first define the firms whose value of input in technological innovation,human capital investment and social contributions are less than the mean value of neighbors as "laggards";on the contrary,the firms are "bellwethers".By studying on the convergent degree of "individual-neighbors",we find that "laggards" are proactive and "bellwethers" are reactive,that is,the reduction of unit discrepancy for input between "laggards" and neighbors will lower the discrepancy for productivity,whose index is larger than the "bellwethers";In other words,the increment of unit discrepancy for input between "bellwethers" and neighbors will heighten the discrepancy for productivity,whose index is smaller.