Is China's growing service sector leading to cost disease?

This paper investigates empirically whether the growing service sector in China leads to cost disease, a likely consequence of tertiarization according to Baumol's unbalanced growth model. The investigation uses a panel data set of 30 provinces. The key findings are: the currently positive contribution of the service sector to growth is largely due to shifts of labour from the primary sector into services; however, signs of cost disease are discernible from weak responses to price signals in demand for services, in wage determination and labour input demand of the service sector.