Value Chain Analysis: A Study on the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area Urban Agglomeration

Abstract

The emergence of urban agglomeration is a new major form of driving force to urbanisation in this era. With the rapid growth of cities, an analysis on the functional division is vital to optimise the coordination among cities within its geographic cluster in order to accelerate further development. Value chain is initially derived from the theory of competitive advantage, with the evolvement and enhancement in the understanding of markets,this concept may be applied as a contemporary approach to analyse the functional specialisation of cities based on selective urban functions, namely, production, research and development, marketing, and management. This paper examines the specialisation of cities in the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area using the empirical data from 2008-2018.The results indicate that, core cities have a higher specialisation index in functions that possess high knowledge intensive characteristics, while peripheral cities have comparative advantage in labour intensive industries in the value chain.