The impact of inter-cluster networks on firms' tfp: A case study of china's automobile manufacturing industry

The debate between agglomeration externality and network externality is the current research hotspot in the field of regional science. With the intensification of globalization and localization, the cooperation of firms will be more frequent. In this context, Global Cluster Network is an emerging theme in the field of economic geography. We discuss network externality in the direction of industrial cluster. Since relational data to measure cooperation between clusters is difficult to obtain, most of the existing literature uses patent data to analyze innovation cooperation between clusters and firms' innovation performance. Existing research lacks the discussion on the total factor productivity of firms. The paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework for the influence of industrial clusters on TFP under different research paradigms, and uses firm- level patent data and supply chain cooperation data to describe the innovation cooperation network and supply chain in automobile manufacturing industry clusters cooperation networks, and use fixed effects panel regression models to compare and analyze the influences of network externality and agglomeration externality on TFP. Industrial clusters are widely networked by supply chain cooperation and innovation cooperation. Among them, supply chain cooperation between clusters is more intensive than innovation cooperation, but the average connection strength of the latter is greater than that of the former. The results show that the supply chain cooperation networks have significant and heterogeneous effects on TFP. For firms with stable supply chain cooperation relationships, for every 100 additional supply chain cooperation between their industrial clusters and other clusters, the firms' TFP will increase by 0.422. For firms lacking stable supply chain cooperation, the TFP is mainly due to the agglomeration externalities caused by intensive supply chain cooperation within the cluster. Further analysis of the mediation effect finds that the influence of network externalities on TFP stems from the learning and matching mechanism, that is, supply chain cooperation between clusters can improve the level of firms' research and development, enhance the matching efficiency to supply chain partners, and then improve firms' TFP. The paper finds that cluster networks are important influencing factors of firms' TFP, which have been widely ignored in existing research. The conclusions enrich the theoretical framework of the Global Cluster Networks and have important policy implications.