Abstract: The development of producer services is the key to promoting the transformation of China's economy to high-quality growth. This paper regards“the Belt and Road”Initiative as a quasi-natural experiment and makes use of the panel data of 280 prefecture-level cities across the country from 2005 to 2018 to examine the impact of“the Belt and Road”Initiative on the producer services aggregation of Chinese node cities along“the Belt and Road”route, the action mechanism, and the heterogeneity of the aggregation methods with the difference-in-difference method. The findings show that“the Belt and Road”Initiative has a significant and positive impact on the aggregation level of the producer service industry in the node cities along the route. This conclusion is still valid after the ancient Silk Road was used to construct instrument variables to deal with the potential endogenous problems, and after other counterfactual tests and multiple robustness tests were conducted. “The Belt and Road”Initiative has significantly improved the level of aggregation of the producer service industries in the node cities along the route through the three channels, i.e., promoting the development of information technology, optimizing the industrial structure, and strengthening the human capital. The promotion effect of“the Belt and Road”Initiative on the aggregation of producer services industry in the node cities in the eastern and western regions is significant, but not significant in the node cities in the central region.“The Belt and Road”Initiative has a positive impact on the exogenous aggregation of the producer service industry in the node cities in the eastern and western regions, while the impact on the endogenous aggregation is not significant.

Key words: “The Belt and Road”Initiative, aggregation of producer services, difference-in-difference model, endogenous aggregation, exogenous aggregation