A Comparative Study on Competitiveness of KIBS in HK and Singapore

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the competitiveness of Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS) in Hong Kong and Singapore from 2005 to 2015. In terms of methodology, we employ three indices—Export Market Share (MS), Revealed Comparative Advantage (RCA) and Relative Trade Advantage (RTA) to measure competitiveness in selected sectors. Results show that although Hong Kong and Singapore have taken up greater world market share, neither of them shows strong comparative advantage in overall KIBS. Based on the RCA index, Singapore has stronger comparative advantage than Hong Kong on overall KIBS, while the values of RTA index reveal reverse conclusion. Both the RCA and the RTA indices exhibit the consistent result that the greatest competitive advantage is earned by financial services sector in Hong Kong as well as Singapore. Of particular note, according to the values of two revealed comparative advantage indices, neither Hong Kong nor Singapore has comparative advantage in charge for the use of intellectual property sector.