Document Type : Theoretic paper
Authors
1
PHD Student of Urban and Regional Economy, Faculty Of Economic, University of Mazandaran
2
Associate Professor of Economic Faculty Of Allame Tabatabaie University
3
Professor Of Economic Faculty Of Allame Tabatabaie University
Abstract
In the past three decades, not only has the realm of service activities in the world economy evolved, but also different interpretations such as "service economy", "business services", "new economy", "superior service", "knowledge-oriented economy", etc. have, accordingly, been used by many analysts. Deep investigation of these interpretations and aspects as well as the terms of their compatibility with the developed and developing countries without giving up a new classification of the service sectors realm is not as easy as expected. To highlight these aspects, an input-output technique is proposed. To implement the technique, we use the input-output tables of 40 countries. Taking into account the comparability of these tables, the countries are grouped according to their per-capita incomes. Service activities have been classified into distributive, producing, personal and social services with the main emphasis on distributive and producing services. In order to identify the role of distributive and producing services in the development process, we propose traditional and modern approaches based on the following questions. First “What changes are brought about regarding the importance of the four service sectors, especially productive and distributive services, based on inter-sector linkages, with the increasing development level?”. Second, so “which one of the two approaches is more appropriate for depicting the relationship between distributive and productive services regarding the level of development?”
The findings reveal that the traditional approach is unable to mark the fast changing role of service activities in the development process. In the new approach, however, an inverse relationship is observed between distributive services and development levels, while producing low levels of development services, high levels of low and its importance in development are outstanding. This finding confirms the fact that there are different interpretations, and new classifications of the realm of service sector activities are compatible more with advanced countries than with developing countries.
Keywords