The Impact of the Opening of Producer Services on the International Competitiveness of Manufacturing Industry

Countries participating in the international division of labor each try to occupy the industrial highlands, obtain competitive advantages, and promote sustainability of economic development. Based on Porter’s Diamond model, it is widely believed that producer services are vital to support the manufacturing industry. Consequently, this paper selects samples of 55 countries and uses data from 2010 to 2017 to empirically test the impact of producer service’s opening on the export competitiveness of the manufacturing industry. The results show that the opening of producer services in a country promotes the improvement of international competitiveness of manufacturing industry, and the improvement effect is more significant in developed countries than in developing countries. Additionally, the negative impact of foreign capital access restrictions on the export competitiveness of the manufacturing industry is greater than the positive impact of service trade opening. It is also found that the restrictions on foreign capital’s opening in the financial sector have the biggest negative impact on manufacturing exports than that of other divisions of the producer service industry. To improve national competitiveness, it is suggested that the integration of service and manufacturing industries should be enhanced and to decrease FDI access to financial and transportation services restrictions.

Producer Services Openness and the Development of Servitization: The Perspective of Two-Way Openness

This paper brings producer services “bringing in” and “going out” into the same analytical framework and explains the influence mechanism of producer services opening on the development of servitization from three aspects of import trade, FDI, and OFDI. On this basis, using the latest input-output data of WIOD, this paper constructs some indicators to measure the openness of producer services such as import trade penetration, FDI penetration, and OFDI penetration and then empirically tests the impact of producer services openness on the development of servitization in China. The results show that the openness of producer services has a significant positive impact on the development of China’s servitization. In addition, the robustness analysis based on variable substitution and different estimation methods shows that the conclusions are robust. The heterogeneity test shows that the impact of producer services openness on servitization has heterogeneity. The specific performance is as follows: there is different impact of producer service sector openness on the development of servitization; the impact of producer service openness on the development of servitization with different factor intensities is also different; and there is also different impact of producer service sector openness on the development of servitization with different factor intensities. The policy implications of these research conclusions are as follows: firstly, taking co-construction of the “Belt and Road” as a chance to promote the new open pattern; secondly, focusing on expanding the openness of high-end producer services; and thirdly, taking innovation driven development as the guide to increase R&D investment of producer services.

An Entropy Weight Method of Collaborative Degree Model Between Producer Service Industry and Manufacturing Industry

In order to study the coupling coordination relationship, the equipment manufacturing industry has been taken as the example to develop the evaluation index system of producer services and equipment manufacturing industry through employing the entropy weighting method. The relationship between them has been verified in the whole country. The research results show that there is a symbiotic relationship between the producer services and the equipment manufacturing industry. Both of them are mutually promoted and symbiotically developed. The unbalanced economic development in all regions of China is dominated by the synergy degree difference of both sides, which provides the guidance for the regional economic development in our country.

Industrial linkage effects of RCEP economies’ imports of producer services on manufacturing advantages

This study examines the industrial transmission mechanisms between producer services imports and manufacturing advantages in RCEP economies. Based on the framework of GVCs’decomposition, we establish a hierarchical linear model (HLM) withthe data from 2007 to 2017 in the ADB MIRO, WTO BaTiS and WITS databases to analyze the impact of producer services imports in RCEP economies on the value-added domestic exports of manufacturing in countries around the world, and the conclusions are as follows: (1) Producer service imports have a significant positive impact on the domestic value-added of manufacturing exports through direct effects, upstream effects and downstream effects. The downstream effect is the main driving force for the improvement of manufacturing. After using instrumental variables to resolve endogeneity, the conclusion remains stable; (2) The downstream effect of insurance imports is the largest among producer services imports. After the outbreak of the world financial crisis, the transmission effect of the industry chain was higher in 2008 than before the crisis. (3) Due to the high degree of specialization of industrial division in developed economies, the transfer effect of the three major industrial chains is greater than that of developing countries and regions.

The Influence of Producer Service Industry Agglomeration on Industrial Structure Upgrading: Empirical Analysis Based on Threshold Model

This paper selects the panel data of 30 provinces and cities in China from 2009 to 2017, and uses the threshold effect model to investigate the non-linear relationship between producer services agglomeration and industrial structure upgrading by taking the agglomeration degree of producer services lagging one year as the threshold variable. The results show that the effect of producer services agglomeration on industrial structure upgrading shows an inverted “U” nonlinear relationship, that is, there is an optimal agglomeration level, and the agglomeration effect has a lag.

High-quality Development Paths of Manufacturing Industry Based on Industrial Convergence

Industrial convergence is the key to achieving high-quality development of manufacturing industry. Based on the analysis of the development situation and convergence level of China’s manufacturing and producer service industry, this paper proposed four paths for the high-quality development of manufacturing from the perspective of industrial convergence: the convergence of research and design factor, the convergence of information technology factor, manufacturing servitization, and service-oriented reverse manufacturing. The conclusion provided some theoretical guidance for the development of manufacturing industry.

Role of Advanced Producer Services Shaping Globalization Processes in a Post-Industrial Region: The Case of the Górnośląsko-Zagłębiowska Metropolis

The paper discusses the emergence of a new regional network of connectivities in the area of advanced producer services in a formerly industrial region in southern Poland. Changes in the region’s job market and the influx of foreign firm centers suggest the presence of globalization processes in the economy. Advanced producer service companies tend to cluster around the regional capital of Katowice and use the city as a gateway to other parts of the studied region. This process leads to the replacement of jobs characterized by lower qualifications with jobs requiring more advanced knowledge, new technologies, and a variety of forms of innovation. International economic networks play an increasingly large role in the entrenchment of economic globalization in the Górnośląsko-Zagłebiowska Metropolis, which has helped the city join other Polish cities in the classification of the World Cities Research Network.