Interregional industrial transfer, industrial correlation spillover, and productivity: evidence from China’s textile industry

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the knowledge spillover effect through industrial correlation in the process of interregional textile industry transfer and its effects on the TFP of China’s textile industry. The paper calculates the industrial similarity coefficients of subdivided industries with the textile industry and identifies the related industries of China’s textile industry by using the data of China’s input-output table and extension tables from 2002 to 2017. Then, the paper defines the industrial correlation spillover as the weighted sum of the indirect R&D investment of one industry from its related industries and constructs a quantitative method to qualify the industrial correlation spillover. Furthermore, the paper makes two empirical analyses on the existence of industrial correlation spillover in the interregional industrial transfer and its effects on productivity using the panel data of two-digit subdivided industries in 30 provinces. The results show that the correlation spillover effect does exist and promotes the interregional textile industry transfer from the eastern coastal region to the central and the northern-coastal regions; the correlation spillover from the related tertiary industries in industrial transfer promotes the TFP of China’s textile industry, but the correlation spillover from the related secondary industries impedes the TFP of the textile industry.

KEYWORDS:

• Industrial correlation spillover
• interregional industrial transfer
• total factor productivity
• China’s textile industry

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• O10
• L52
• N65

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to anonymous reviewers and editors for their comments and suggestions on this article.

Author contributions

Conceptualization, C.-M.L.; methodology, C.-M.L. and J.-Y.W.; validation, C.-M.L. and J.-Y.W.; formal analysis C.-M.L. and J.-Y.W.; data curation, J.-Y.W. and C.-M.L.; writing-original draft preparation, C.-M.L. and J.-Y.W.; writing- review and editing, C.-M.L., C. Amos, and Y-Z.S.; funding acquisition, C.-M.L. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Notes

¹ Eight regions are divided as followed: Beijing-Tianjin region (BT), northern-coastal region (NC), northeast region (NE), eastern-coastal region (EC), southern-coastal region (SC), central region (CR), southwest region (SW) and northwest region (NW).

² The average years of education in one industry is the sum of the average years of education in each academic degree and the corresponding number of people.

³ In view of the limited space, the panel data of different regions is not listed in this article, and interested parties can obtain it from the author.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by the National Social Science Foundation Project “Comparative Research on the Performance of Interregional Industrial Transfer in China Based on the Spillover Effect of Industrial Correlation”, grant number 15XJL008, the Key Project of Philosophy and Social Science Foundation of Gansu Province”Research on the Direction and Path of Gansu Building Industrial Clusters with Hundreds of Billions Scale”, grant number 2021ZD001, Soft Science Special Project of Gansu Basic Research Plan “Research on the Path of Gansu’s Industrial Integration into the “Belt and Road” to Achieve High-quality Development”, grant number 22JRZA082, Hongliu Support Subject Project of Lanzhou University of Technology, grant number 201801.