Internet development and the spatial optimization of regional productivity: Evidence from China

The rapid development of the Internet had a profound influence on the spatial distribution of economic output activities. On the basis of theoretical analysis, this study takes China's regions as research samples and construct a spatial econometric model to empirically analyze the impact of Internet development on regional productivity. The analysis reveals that the distribution of regional productivity in China had significant spatial correlation; regional productivity had positive spatial externalities; Internet development had significant promotion effects and positive spatial spillover effects to regional productivity, but the effects are heterogeneous in different subregions. The subregion analysis shows that the optimization effect of the Internet on regional productivity exhibits heterogeneity in different subregions. The threshold effect analysis reveals the increasing marginal effect of Internet development on regional productivity, and economic development and human capital supply are important factors restricting this marginal effect. Altogether, this study provides useful references on the positive effects of the Internet on regional productivity in the spatial dimension, and suggests that the policy makers can optimize the spatial distribution of regional productivity by promoting Internet access in various regions and narrowing the digital divide among regions.     

Location matters: A spatial econometric analysis of regional resilience in the European Union

The aim of this study is to empirically examine regional resilience by assessing economic growth patterns in two distinct groups of regions across the European Union in the aftermath of the 2008 economic and financial crisis. In an effort to consider the regions as interconnected economic areas and account for spillover effects, the model incorporates complex spatial effects that consider both spatial heterogeneity and spatial dependence. The analysis follows a step‐wise approach. First, spatial heterogeneity is assessed by employing Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis, which identifies two distinct spatial regimes, a core and a periphery, based on their initial level of economic development. A Spatial Durbin Model is then employed to estimate the determinants of regional resilience and growth in both regimes, including potential spillover effects. Results indicate that while both spatial regimes experience processes of economic convergence, recent determinants of growth, as well as spillover dynamics, differ across the two. In the core regime, better institutions, higher shares of investment, and an economy specialized in higher value‐added sectors significantly spur domestic growth, with investment also inducing positive spillover effects to neighbouring regions. In the peripheral regime, low shares of lower‐secondary educational attainment and high shares of tertiary educational attainment have a significant positive effect on domestic growth, with higher shares of tertiary educational attainment also inducing positive spillover effects. Moreover, technological readiness is also identified as an important factor in the peripheral regime with positive spillover effects. Upon the bedrock of these findings, initial policy proposals are offered.     

Shift‐Share Analysis and Changes in Japanese Manufacturing Employment

Shift‐share analysis is used to examine the role of spatial structure on changes in regional manufacturing employment, in contrast to the traditional focus of shift‐share studies on the role of industrial structure. It is argued that changes in a region's space‐economy can be understood not only in terms of the economic subdivisions of the region but also in terms of the contribution of its spatial subdivisions. The latter is illustrated by means of a case study of the contribution of different types of local area to changes in regional manufacturing employment in Japan. Each region was subdivided into four types of local area based on population density. The analysis covered the period from 1981 to 1995, a time of major transformation in Japan's space‐economy. The shift‐share model was also used to estimate the impact of local area output and productivity on changes in regional employment. In general, the results show that there was a progressive underdevelopment of the core regions, associated with falling output and productivity. The country's peripheral regions were characterized by development, associated with rising output and productivity. Atthe local scale, however, the picture is far more complex. Types of local area contributed to regional employment change in very different ways, with respect to both time, region, and output/productivity. The contribution of local spatial structure to the regional space‐economy of Japan is fundamentally fragmented and uneven.     

Endogenous Processes in European Regional Growth: Convergence and Policy

The traditional empirical approaches to the analysis of economic growth,cross‐section and panel data regressions are substantially uninformative withrespect to the issue of convergence. Whether national or regional economies appear to converge in terms of per capita income or productivity levels (the so‐called β‐convergence) critically depends on the way in which the empirical model is specified. Traditional specifications witness a disproportionate presence of proxies for forces leading towards divergence among the conditioning variables. It is therefore hardly surprising that these analyses find a positive and statistically significant value for the estimate of the speed of convergence. A more constructive use of cross‐section and panel data regressions is in the analysis of the determinants of growth. The present paper therefore builds on recent work on the role of different growth determinants (Cheshire and Carbonaro 1996) and analyses the growth performance of 122 Functional Urban Regions (FURs)over the period 1978–1994. This model explicitly recognizes growth as amultivariate process. In this new formulation it incorporates a spatialized adaptation of Romer's endogenous growth model (Romer 1990), developing the work of Magrini (Magrini 1997). Magrini's model originated from the view that technological knowledge has a very important tacit component that has been neglected in formal theories of endogenous growth. This tacit component, being the non‐written personal heritage of individuals or groups, is naturally concentrated in space. As a result, technological change is profoundly influenced by the interaction between firms and their local environments. The present paper reports the results of the estimation of a fully specified model of regional growth in per capita income. Particular attention is played to the role of research and development (R&D) activities, and to the influence of factors such as Universities that shape the local environments and have important policy implications. These results are then applied to quantifying the scope for policy to influence the growth process. Several simulations are presented deriving alternative growth outcomes across European regions that would have been obtained if those variables over which policy might have control—including the contribution of human capital—had had alternative values reflecting the realistic scope of policy makers' influence. The implications for convergence/divergence in regional per capita income levels are then analyzed using a Markov chain approach (Quah 1993 and 1996; Magrini 1999).     

Whether polycentric spatial structure is conducive to regional coordinated development: A study on urban agglomerations in China

With the aggravation of congestion, pollution, and other negative externalities generated by continued urbanization, polycentric strategies have gradually become one of the main urban and regional spatial strategies. It remains unclear, however, whether the polycentric structure is conducive to regional coordinated development. This study examines these issues using China's urban agglomerations (UAs) as a sample. The Prolonged Artificial Nighttime-light Dataset of China (PANDA) was used to measure the polycentric structure. The results of the nonparametric identification of sub-centers show that almost all of China's UAs exhibit multiple (sub)centers, and the number of (sub)centers in most UAs has increased from 1992 to 2020. Empirical analysis shows that a polycentric structure is beneficial for narrowing regional disparities within the UA, and the narrowing effect of the polycentric structure on regional disparities increases as the distance between centers increases. Furthermore, a polycentric spatial structure is more conducive to the economic growth of small cities in UA, thereby promoting the coordinated development of regions within UA.     

Research and development intensive clusters and regional competitiveness

Modern cluster theory provides reasons for positive external effects that accrue from the interaction of spatially proximate firms operating in common and related fields of economic activity. In this paper, we examine the impact of R&D-intensive clusters as a key factor of regional competitiveness on productivity growth. In relying on a hybrid approach of cluster identification, we examine effects of cluster specialization and diversity for a panel of German NUTS-3 regions in 2003–2019. After controlling for regional characteristics and unobserved heterogeneity, a robust cluster strength effect (i.e., specialization) on productivity growth is found within the context of conditional convergence across German regions. With regard to the underlying mechanisms, we find that the presence of multiple R&D-intensive clusters in specific technological fields is most strongly linked to higher levels of regional productivity growth. We also find that advantages from cluster specialization are strongest in key industrial sector such as automobile production, machinery, chemical and pharmaceutical products. Overall, our estimates particularly highlight the working of Marshallian externalities in productivity dynamics, while Jacobs-type spillovers tend to be partially realized. These findings indicate that some but not all cluster-based regional development strategies are promising policy tools to foster regional growth processes.     

The Spatial Distribution of Military Spending in the United States 1941-1985

The spatial distribution of military expenditures in the United States is a major influence on the regional shifts of economic activity that are occurring in the US. The purpose of this study is to trace the changing spatial distribution of military prime contract awards (MPCAs) from 1941 to 1985. Using T-mode and S-mode factor analysis, the results indicate that since 1941 there have been four distinct eras in the spatial distribution of MPCAs. During each era the spatial pattern of military spending remained stable. The shift from one era to another appears to be linked to changes in the type of weapons purchased by the Department of Defense. The most recent era, the High-Technology Weapons era, has lasted for twenty years. The long-term stability evident in the spatial distribution of MPCAs supports the argument that military expenditures have played an important role in regional economic development and change. The findings also indicate that, while many states tend to follow the national trend in military spending, there are also four distinct groups of states which have gained and then lost their positions as military production centers. The main reason behind the rapid growth and decline of MPCAs going to these states was their dependence on a single weapons system.     

Who leads regional industrial dynamics? “New industry creators” in Chinese regions

Recent evolutionary economic geography studies have argued that regional diversification emerges as a path‐dependent process, as regions often branch into industries that are related to its industrial structure. However, it is less clear who are creating new industries and under what regional conditions. This research seeks to fill this gap and identify “new industry creators” in regional industrial diversification. We differentiate two types of new industry formation—path‐breaking and path‐dependent—and examine whether some new industry creators are more path‐breaking than others, by incorporating two factors that have been largely overlooked in recent literature on technological relatedness—firm heterogeneity and regional institutions. Based on a firm‐level data set of China’s manufacturing industries, this paper shows that path‐breaking and path‐dependence coexist. Empirical results confirm that firm heterogeneity and regional institutions not only affect the firms’ capabilities in creating new industries, but also encourage/discourage firms to be adventurous and path‐breaking. This research implies that lagging regions can catch up with developed regions by coordinating regional resources and adjusting local institutional arrangements to attract more path‐breaking firms.     

Urban growth in a post-2000 central Chinese urban agglomeration: Case study of the Changzhutan region

The rapid development of coastal urban agglomerations in China has gained global attention since the 1980s. Recently, several regions in the Central China have also experienced rapid economic development. The objectives of this paper are to explore whether the spatial pattern of urban growth in Central China's urban agglomerations is the same as those costal ones and whether it is driven by anything other than external forces. Using the Changzhutan region as an example, this study analyses the economic transformation and spatial restructuring of the populations in urban agglomerations in Central China and explores the driving factors of urban growth using regression models. We find that most of the population is concentrated in prefecture-level city districts and county seats, which is markedly different from the large-scale regional population agglomerations found in the coastal urban agglomerations. Domestic investment, instead of foreign investment, and human capital, has become important factors driving the population migration. This finding sharply contrasts with the pattern found in coastal urban agglomerations, where regional concentrations of the population and economic activities are primarily driven by labour-intensive and global economies. This case study may serve as a basis for future urban planning and management in Central China.     

The space-time evolution and driving forces of county economic growth in China from 1998 to 2015

Coordinated growth in regional economies is fundamental for sustainable economic development. In this study, the space-time dynamics of GDP per capita for 2,303 counties in China from 1998 to 2015 were analyzed based on an exploratory space-time data analysis (ESTDA) framework. The results showed that: (a) there was significant and increasing positive spatiotemporal correlation among county-level economic growth; (b) local spatiotemporal correlation pattern demonstrated a high–high cluster at the eastern coast, and low–low dispersion in the vast central and western regions; (c) changes in LISA time trajectory revealed that economic growth in the coastal urban agglomeration and Inner Mongolia was more dynamic, indicating the emergence of a local spatial structure locking feature and trajectory dependence; and (d) industrialization and informatization were the two primary contributors to county economic growth. Our study suggests that Chinese government should construct network channels linking the central region with eastern China, cultivate economic growth poles and growth axis, and focus on technological innovation to unlock path dependence in county economic growth.     

Do Administrative Boundaries Matter for Uneven Economic Development? A Case Study of China's Provincial Border Counties

This paper uses China's provincial border counties as samples to explore the role played by administrative boundaries in uneven regional economic development. The results indicate that the gap between provincial border counties and other regions is increasing and that economic diffusion to provincial border counties from developed regions is extremely weak. Moreover, provincial border counties have become economically backward. A regression analysis model that includes certain novel factors that are likely to influence economic growth confirms the significant effects of government intervention and administrative boundaries on economic growth in provincial border counties. This paper concludes that administrative boundaries' effects should be nullified by limiting preferential development policies and implementing policies that instead help provincial border counties engage in sustainable development.     

The Local versus Global Dilemma of the Effects of Structural Funds

This paper extends the analysis by Dall'erba and Le Gallo dealing with the impact of structural funds on the growth process of European regions. Like most of the other 18 contributions assessing the efficiency of structural funds, our article was based on a global model of β‐convergence: one coefficient pertaining to the structural funds variable was estimated for the whole sample. In this paper, we extend this approach by performing local estimations, where one coefficient is estimated for each region, so that the impact of structural funds can be regionally differentiated. As in the previous contribution, the presence of spatial spillover effects is taken into account using spatial econometric techniques, but here we apply a Bayesian locally linear spatial estimation method on a conditional β‐convergence model, which allows global and local β‐convergence to be viewed in a continuous fashion. Our results indicate that structural funds have a weak global impact on the European Union regional growth process, but that their local impacts are very diverse, with a positive influence on the growth of British, Greek, and southern Italian regions.     

Net primary productivity-based factors of China's carbon intensity: A regional perspective

Reducing carbon intensity (CI) is one of the core steps of climate change mitigation. This study emphasized the roles of ecological services and regional heterogeneity in determining CI. We considered heterogeneities based on geography and income and explored the roles of net primary productivity (NPP)-based carbon footprint and CI in the changes in China's CI over 2001−2015 using an extended production-theoretical decomposition analysis and matching the socio-economic data sets with NPP data from a remote sensing satellite. We found that group technological change, reflecting the effect of shrinkage or expansion of the group best practice frontier, and the potential NPP-based carbon footprint, reflecting the impact of energy-related CO₂ emissions on ecological carbon absorption, are the most significant factors accounting for the increase and decrease in CI, respectively, while NPP-based CI generally accounts for the decline in CI. We further showed that the technology gap change exhibited by an invert U-shaped curve contributed to the increase in CI under geography-based heterogeneity. We advise that China's policies should be more focused on ecological factors and regional heterogeneity in regions with abundant NPP (e.g., Yunnan and Sichuan) to further reduce CI.     

The elusive quest for balanced regional growth from Barlow to Brexit: Lessons from partitioning regional employment growth in Great Britain

The British Government’s economic strategy for post‐Brexit Britain of achieving balanced regional growth by “driving growth across the whole country” echoes the objectives set by the Barlow Report of 1940. The regional policies that followed the Barlow Report were heavily influenced by papers written for the Commission by G D A (later Sir Donald) MacDougall. The first of these papers was included as an appendix to the report itself and introduced the shift‐share methodology to the analysis of regional employment growth, and subsequently shown to be flawed. The second paper considered the urban hierarchy and growth but was never fully developed. Consequently post‐war regional policy focussed on the contribution of industrial structure to employment growth without fully taking into account the urban hierarchy or regional locations of that employment. This article replaces the flawed shift‐share methodology with multifactor partitioning (MFP) and applies it to regional employment growth for the period 1971‐2012, a span of special interest because it largely coincides with British membership of the European Union (EU). The deficiencies in the second paper are addressed by introducing allometry to measure the employment growth of each region relative to that of Great Britain and then regression analysis to relate the allometries to distance from London. The results of the two sets of analyses highlight the need for a multiple‐factor, comprehensive, and integrated approach to regional policy and provide a benchmark against which to gauge the success of Britain's post‐Brexit policy of driving future growth across the whole country.     

Impact of Accessibility and Knowledge Creation on Local and Regional Development in Turkey

One of the fundamental aspects of the economic and social viability of the local and regional areas of Turkey is the degree to which they have access to the wider national economic and social system. Accessibility is, therefore, of major social, economic and political significance in Turkey and it directly affects Turkey's regional growth and the quality of life in local communities. However, the importance of the economic and social viability of the communities is increasingly complicated in the face of rapid global economic recession. It is argued that countries need to develop knowledge economies to compete successfully as knowledge is a critical factor for growth. This paper integrates accessibility and the importance of knowledge creation in understanding local and regional economic development. This empirical study has shown that although there is a high correlation between the accessibility index and the population figures of Turkey, accessibility to knowledge differs across Turkish provinces.     

Regional impact and spillover effect of public infrastructure investment: An empirical study in the Yangtze River Delta,China

Since China's reform and opening up, public infrastructure investments have significantly improved. These investments drive China's long-term economic growth. Based on panel data of 41 cities in the Yangtze River Delta from 2006 to 2017, the simultaneous equation models (SEMs) are constructed to explore the regional impact and spillover effect of infrastructures with resolving endogenous problems. Public infrastructure investment remains to have a systemic effect on household income, urban population, and land prices in certain regions. In certain region, the estimated coefficients of public infrastructure investment are consistent with expectations and significant, which are 0.523, 0.142, and 0.781 with three-stage least squares method. And the endogenous variables also affect public infrastructure investment. But, the coefficient of the spatial term is −0.019, negative and not significant. The cross-regional spillover effect of public infrastructure investment is nonsignificant using the generalized spatial three-stage least squares method.     

Physical Capital,Human Capital,and Social Capital: The Changing Roles in China's Economic Growth

This paper examines the roles of physical capital, human capital, and social capital in China's economic growth during the reform period 1981–2010. Empirical estimation confirms that physical capital and human capital contribute to the economic growth, probably due to the capital accumulation and the improvement of labor productivity. The impact of social capital turns from being insignificant in the 1980s and the 1990s to be positive in the 2000s, suggesting its rising importance in recent decades. A declining role of physical capital in the economic growth in China from 1990s to 2000s is also found. The findings hold for several additional robustness checks, including focusing on longer term determinants of the economic growth, subregional analysis, and endogeneity. Furthermore, the foreign direct investment inflows and adjustment of economic ownership structure are also important for economic growth in China.     

城市空间增长效应评价方法——以重庆市为例

在城市空间快速增长背景下,开展城市空间增长效应评价研究,有助于解决城市空间增长中出现的问题,可为确定城市空间发展战略、制定空间发展政策提供依据。城市空间增长效应评价方法旨在定量、客观地判断城市空间增长过程中要素配置与运行是否合理、高效和公平。笔者建立了结构配置效应、经济配置效应和公平配置效应3个方面的评价体系,通过目标法对城市空间增长效应进行评价,得出空间增长效应评价函数。以重庆市为例进行实证分析,结果显示：重庆市2004-2013年间的城市空间增长效应总体呈上升发展趋势,结构性、公平性趋好;合理配置效应和经济配置效应波动显著,反映出城市建设面临的用地结构优化、用地效率提升等方面的问题。     

The relationship between China's income inequality and transport infrastructure,economic growth,and carbon emissions

Since the beginning of the 21st century, accompanied by the tremendous achievements of China's economic growth is an increasingly severe income gap between the rich and the poor. Based on panel data from 2000 to 2018, this study systematically examined the relationship among transport infrastructure, economic growth, carbon emissions, and income inequality in China, using the panel vector autoregressive model estimated by the generalized method of moments. We further divided China into three regions to investigate the regional heterogeneity of these relationships. The results show a long‐run equilibrium relationship between transport infrastructure, economic growth, carbon emissions, and income inequality. Income inequality in the previous year significantly affects that in the current year positively. Whether at the national or regional level, economic growth affects income inequality negatively. For the national sample, the highway reduces income inequality, while the railway increases income inequality. For both the subsamples and the national sample, carbon emissions significantly increase income inequality and are the Granger test cause for income inequality. Furthermore, we discuss some of the possible mechanisms of these results. Our findings generate policy implications for reducing income inequality in regard to economic growth, transport infrastructure, and carbon emissions.