Creative service industries and regional productivity

Abstract

This research analyses the effect of creative service industries on labour productivity of the regions. Creative service industries offer services that increase a region's capacity to generate and combine new ideas, resulting in an increased production of innovations which raise productivity. The paper proposes an analytical framework and compares findings in 250 regions in 24 countries of the European Union in 2008. We find that creative service industries increases labour productivity of the regions and their effects are as important for regional productivity as scientific research or highly qualified human capital.JEL classification: R11, R12, R58

On the performance of creative industries: Evidence from Mexican metropolitan areas

“…Moving to industrial intensity, all the specifications in Tables and show no statistical evidence for possible correlations between industrial structure and the performance of the creative industries. The low correlation between the creative sector and the manufacturing industries has been also documented by previous works (Boix‐Domenech & Soler‐Marco, ; Lee, ; Sobrino, ). With regards to population density, this study confirms that denser metropolitan areas in Mexico, captured by δ 5 effect, are more productive as urban scale can facilitate better matches between worker skills and job requirements.…”

“…The dynamic patterns of creative industries in recent years have opened a debate on the potential positive impacts on regional productivity growth (Capello & Lenzi, ; Lee, ; UNCTAD, ). The creative class is now an important sector of the economy not only in developed countries (Boix‐Domenech & Soler‐Marco, ; Stam et al ) but also in developing economies (UNCTAD, ). Previous work, focusing on the performance of the creative sector, has either carried out a firm‐level (Castiglione et al ; Kourtit & Nijkamp, ) or a regional‐level (Cerisola, ; Stam et al ; Zeng et al ) approach.…”

“…Industrial intensity represents the share of workers employed in the manufacturing sector. This variable is often included in the RGM literature (Boix-Domenech & Soler-Marco, 2017;Cerisola, 2016;Lee, 2014) to control for the industrial structure. Population density is a proxy for urbanization economies.…”

“…Although Zeng et al () made use of very simplified models, their work is worth mentioning as it combines and compares, DEA and SFA techniques. Another important consideration is the fact that most of the studies, except for Boix‐Domenech and Soler‐Marco () and Capello and Lenzi (), have focused on analysing all regions of the country. The strategy is to analyse all administrative divisions (e.g., states, provinces, etc.…”

“…In this era of rapid globalization, ideas and creativity have become fundamental to any market economy. Creativity and innovation are now driving the new knowledge economy, therefore, metropolitan areas that have adopted creativity as a central value have generated significantly higher revenue and are expected to provide greater stability into the future (Boix‐Domenech & Soler‐Marco, ; Capello & Lenzi, ). Although there are many disputes about the definition of the creative sector, the common denominator of these industries is that ideas, skill and talent rather than physical capital are their key attributes.…”