The Impact Of The Agglomeration Of Producer Service Industry On Urban Total Factor Productivity

In the four decades of reform and opening up,China's economy has achieved leapfrog development with remarkable success.From 1978 to 2019,the average annual GDP growth is greater than 9%,but this rapid growth is largely manifested as essential factor investment growth,at the cost of consuming elements of demographic dividends,capital,natural resources and the environment and so on.Eventually,this kind of extensive economic growth has lead to a series of increasingly serious problems such as the imbalance of industrial structure and development,the inefficiency of China's resource allocation,and serious environmental damage.In recent years,in order to solve these problems,the state has successively proposed measures to promote high-quality economic development,such as supply-side structural reforms,regional coordinated development strategy,and innovation-driven development strategy.In particular,the economic development of China has entered the New Normal stage of medium and high speed growth.Facing the transformation of economic development pattern and the adjustment of economic structure,we have to seek new momentum of growth for economic development.Xi Jinping stated in the report of the 19 th National Congress that the strategic goal of China's economic development is to build a Modern Economic System based on quality,efficiency and dynamic reform,to improve total factor productivity(TFP),and to continuously enhance economic innovation and competitiveness.It can be shown that the improvement of TFP supported by technological innovation and efficiency progress is increasingly regarded as the focus of promoting high-quality economic development.In the adjustment of industrial structure,China has gradually transformed from a Manufacturing Country to a Service Country.The contribution rate of the tertiary industry to economic growth has increased from 24.6% in 1978 to 59.7% in 2018.The tertiary industry plays an increasingly important role in the national economy and performs best in the Producer Service Industry.As a booster for economic growth,it provides specialized services for various types of production activities.Therefore,the development of producer service industry in cities has also attracted much attention.In the process of coordinated regional development,the construction of urban clusters in China has increasingly become the development direction of new urbanization.It will help to reduce the development gap between regions and to provide solutions for the problems China faces in the process of achieving high-quality economic development.Based on the above background,this article analyzes the impact of producer service industry centralization on TFP at the cities and city clusters level based on labor division theory,industrial district,new economic geography theory,and the theory of the industrial cluster life cycle.The main content can be divided into four parts: Firstly,to conclude relevant researches on the agglomeration of producer service industry,urban TFP and city clusters.Secondly,to analyze the impact mechanism of the agglomeration of producer service industry on urban TFP.Thirdly,to calculate and analyze the agglomeration of producer service industry and TFP at the level of cities and city clusters.At last,this article used panel datas from 285 Prefecture-level cities and above in China from 2003 to 2017 to perform empirical analysis of the relationship between the agglomeration of producer service industry and TFP at the city and top ten city clusters levels,and based on the characteristic variables of the city,to perform related threshold tests between them.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:(1)There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the agglomeration of producer service industry and TFP at the city level.To be specific,to the left of the inflection point,as the deepening of the agglomeration of producer service industry,urban TPF increases.Besides,when the agglomeration level rises to the right of the inflection point,the increase of urban total factor productivity will be inhibited by the deepening of the agglomeration of producer service industry.And the value of the inflection point of the inverted U-shaped curve is 8.6389%.At present,the agglomeration of producer service industry in most cities in China is still to the left of the inflection point.It can be seen that agglomeration has promoted the improvement of urban TPF.(2)The agglomeration of producer service industry mainly affects the urban TFP by technological changes.In the test of the relationship between the agglomeration of producer service industry and the TFP decomposition item,it is found that the agglomeration of producer service industry has a positive U-shaped relationship with efficiency changes while it has an inverted Ushaped relationship with technological changes.But it has no significant impact on scale changes.Furthermore,the change of the urban TFP is not mainly determined by efficiency changes and scale changes but technological changes.(3)The impact of the agglomeration of producer service industry on TFP differs at the level of city clusters.The agglomeration of producer service industry and TFP still show an inverted U-shape relationship in most city clusters.And the inflection points of the inverted U-curve of the agglomeration of producer service industry and TFP are sorted in this type of city group as: Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei City Clusters(10.2982%)> Central Yangtze River City Clusters(6.1008%)> Yangtze River Delta City Clusters(4.8205%)> Pearl River Delta City Clusters(1.9107%)> Shandong Peninsula City Clusters(0.2561%).Among them,only the agglomeration of producer service industry of Shandong Peninsula City Clusters has crossed the inflection point while the average level of the agglomeration of producer service industry of the first four city clusters is on the left of the inflection point.In addition,the agglomeration of producer service industry in Liao zhongnan City Clusters has clearly promoted the improvement of TFP.However,the agglomeration of producer service industry in Chengdu-Chongqing City Clusters,Harbin-Changchun City Clusters,West Coast Strait City Clusters,and Central Plains City Clusters did not have a significant impact on the improvement of TFP.(4)Urban characteristic variables have threshold effects on the relationship between the agglomeration of producer service industry and urban TFP.The scale of the city and the level of urban informatization have single threshold effect while the level of urban economic development has a two-threshold effect on the relationship between the agglomeration of producer service industry and urban TFP.Moreover,the three urban characteristic variables of city size,city informatization level and city economic development level all make a similar "U-shaped" relationship between the agglomeration of producer service industry and urban TFP.Finally,according to the conclusions of this paper,the following policy suggestions are proposed to promote urban economic growth by adjusting the industrial structure:(1)Optimize the development environment and promote the agglomeration of producer service industry.(2)Strengthen industrial integration and promote the exertion of industrial agglomeration effects.(3)Control the scale of agglomeration and rationally plan the industrial layout of city clusters.(4)Match the characteristics of cities and formulate appropriate industrial agglomeration strategies.