Abstract
Constructing an all-directional, multilevel, and composite interconnection network, accelerating the free flow of producer services elements across regions, and further improving the efficiency of resource integration demand to conduct a comprehensive and systematic analysis of producer services trade. Thus, using bilateral trade data, this paper builds producer services trade network composed of 61 major countries and innovatively combines the methods of social network and economic geography to explore its spatiotemporal evolution and system properties. The results show that, firstly, the producer services trade network has spatial heterogeneity, which is characterized by high-value agglomerations in Western Europe and East Asia, and low-value agglomerations in Southern Europe and Southeast Asia. Secondly, most countries tend to choose trading partners with close geographical locations or common cultures to establish a cohesive subgroup. Thirdly, the producer services trade network has a significant core-periphery structure, the “spaghetti bowl” effect, which leads to a downward trend in the number of core and semi-peripheral countries. Finally, the trade agreement relations, language relations, and differences in economy, geography, institution, and technology all have a significant impact on the evolution of producer services trade network, but this change has little relationship with the population size divergences of different countries.
Highlights
As the world economy has presented a trend of transformation from industrial type to being service-oriented, the service industry has become the focus of international trade, among which producer services industry is the most critical branch because it gathers a lot of knowledge and capital [1, 2]
As a result of the unbalanced development of service industry in various countries and the differences in negotiations, the liberalization of services trade under the framework of General Agreement on International Trade in service (GATS) has made slow progress, and regional services trade agreements have gradually sprung up, such as the “Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)” and “International Trade in Services Agreement (TISA).” ese changes in regional economic and trade cooperation increase the uncertainty of the future development of the producer services trade network
E evolution of centrality index of producer services trade network is shown in Table 4 and Figure 3. e degree centrality of a node represents the number of trade relations and it is the simplest indicator to evaluate its position in the trade network; the results indicate that the top three key nodes are stable in the United States (USA), the United Kingdom (GBR), and Germany (DEU)
Summary
As the world economy has presented a trend of transformation from industrial type to being service-oriented, the service industry has become the focus of international trade, among which producer services industry is the most critical branch because it gathers a lot of knowledge and capital [1, 2]. Affected by the application of information technology [3, 4], the elements of producer services are redistributed in the global market; more countries carry out trade activities as exporters or importers, forming a gigantic relationship network of producer services trade Whether it can become a key node with control power in producer services trade network determines the construction of a “servicedriven country,” and reflects the position of international division of labor and the distribution of interests in the economic globalization. Erefore, it is of great significance to study the spatiotemporal evolution and the complex features of producer services trade network for complementing the study of competitiveness evaluation based on trade volume accounting and formulating adaptive and feasible trade strategies It is the practice of network analysis method in a specific industry level.
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