By Shi Guang, Research Institute of Finance, DRC

Research Report, No.164, 2018 (Total 5439) 2018-9-30

Abstract: As an important part of the modern economic system, knowledge-intensive service industry plays the most active role in the innovation of service industry, which accounts for about one-third of the GDP of the developed countries and nearly half of their service industry. This paper analyzes the main features of the development of knowledge-intensive industry in major representative countries, the four Nordic countries, the four small but powerful countries and BRICS countries from 1999 to 2014. With the development of the economy, the proportion of knowledge-intensive service industry in GDP keeps increasing, and the post-industrialized countries have a much bigger proportion. Besides, their labour productivity increases much faster. In 2017, the research and development input in knowledge-intensive service industry took the lead in the world for the first time. The knowledge-intensive service industry in representative countries presents a pattern of “one power and many super powers”. High-income countries focus on medical care and business services, while middle- and low-income countries pay more attention to the development of financial, information and education sectors. The experience of representative countries shows that: knowledge-intensive service industry is an important embodiment of national competitiveness; the development of knowledge-intensive service industry will help to reduce the ”cost disease”that constrains the development of service industry; and the development patterns of knowledge-intensive service industry are different from those in high-tech manufacturing industry.

Key words: knowledge-intensive service industry, innovation, technological advancement