Growth and Change最新文献

Contrary to the existing literature that suggests the inhibitory or facilitating effect of housing prices on entrepreneurial dynamism, this paper explores the nonlinear effect of housing prices on entrepreneurship and countervailing effect of entrepreneurial dynamism on housing prices, in addition to investigating the spatial interaction between the two. This paper constructs a simultaneous equation model (SEM) to empirically test the interaction and spillover effects between housing prices and entrepreneurial dynamism. The results show that: (1) there is a two-way interaction between housing prices and entrepreneurial dynamism; (2) the estimated coefficients of housing prices and the quadratic square term of housing prices (14.285 and −0.744, respectively) are consistent and significant as expected, indicating an inverted U-shaped effect of housing prices on entrepreneurial dynamism; and (3) in geospatial terms, there are positive spatial spillovers and negative spatial interaction effects for both house prices and entrepreneurial dynamism in Yangtze River Delta cities.

This paper investigates the effect of administrative level on local economic growth from the perspective of officials' rank. We notice an interesting phenomenon that higher-ranking local officials (HRO) serve in cities with lower administrative level, can effectively improve economic performance similar to the effect of promoting administrative level of local government. Based on prefecture-level city data from 2001 to 2019, we find that HRO can significantly promote local economic growth, especially in cities with lower levels of development. The mechanism analysis shows that the HRO cities not only could receive upper-level government's favoritism but also tend to shape good business environment to attract investment. Further, HRO is a softer and shorter way than a formal change of regional administrative level, with less negative impact on the surrounding regions. The results provide new evidence that raising administrative level promotes regional development.

It is of great significance to explore the causality between regional integration (RI) and PM_2.5 pollution within urban agglomerations in the current pursuit of ecological civilization construction and high-quality development. Using panel data of 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016, this study considers the expansion of the city economic coordination committee in Yangtze River Delta (YRDECC) as a quasi-natural experiment of RI, and use a difference-in difference method to explore the effect and inner mechanisms of RI on PM_2.5 concentration. After a descriptive analysis of the spatial-temporal variation trend of the PM_2.5 concentration in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration, the empirical results show that RI helps to alleviate 4.8% of the PM_2.5 concentration overall. For the original cities, the reduction effect on the PM_2.5 concentration is 5.2%, for the new cities, however, RI exacerbates 2.1% of the local PM_2.5 concentration. A series of robustness tests confirm the validity of the baseline results, and further indicate that the effect of RI remains significant in the long term and starts to increase from the third year. Furthermore, the reduction effect of RI on PM_2.5 concentration is more pronounced in cities with larger scales, more developed economies, and higher degrees of marketization. The mechanism analysis shows that industrial transfer, population migration and technological innovation are significant channels of RI that affect PM_2.5 concentrations. The conclusions of this paper provide a new path to alleviate PM_2.5 pollution and achieve ecological conservation and high-quality development in the city cluster area.

Big socio-economic well-being gap is common across countries and regions. This study examines the impact of tourism on socio-economic well-being and its convergence from a comprehensive and inter-regional convergence perspective. Using panel data of 291 cities during the period 2005–2019, we provide the comprehensive evaluation of socio-economic well-being at the city scale in China. Considering the dynamic characteristics of socio-economic well-being, we therefore estimate the impact using the system generalized method of moments. The result indicates that tourism significantly enhances local socio-economic well-being and is found to be robust. We also find the dominance of domestic tourism, the positive moderator effects of general budget expenditure, GDP per capita and urbanization, and a greater driving force in cities with higher socio-economic well-being. Since both β- and σ-convergence hold, we confirm the positive effect of tourism on the convergence of inter-regional socio-economic well-being. We emphasize policies support for tourism development in underdeveloped regions through fiscal expenditure, financial transfer payments, intellectual support, urbanization, and infrastructure construction. We suggest incorporating tourism into frameworks such as rural revitalization and regional coordinated development. We also recommend accelerating the expansion of tourism in underdeveloped regions and enhancing the quality of tourism in developed regions as spatial strategies, while emphasizing inter-regional tourism coordination and cooperation.

Innovation can lead to wage inequalities through different channels. This paper explores this relationship, focusing on the direct and spillover (indirect) effects of these channels on personal wage inequalities in Brazilian regions. Product and process innovation are measured by patents and the acquisition of foreign technology through imports of capital goods respectively. Based on data that covers 482 regions from 2003 to 2014, we use the Spatial Durbin Model with spatial fixed effects to control spatial dependence and heterogeneity across regions. The results point to a positive association between our measures of innovation and wage inequalities. However, as we found a non-linear relationship between imports of capital goods and wage inequality, an increase in imports of capital goods may reduce wage inequality. Other variables may also cause inequality to fall, such as the share of the population with a higher education degree and social skills. Drivers behind an increase in inequality are female participation in the workforce and the level of GDP per capita.

Differences between urban, suburban, and rural voting outcomes in U.S. presidential elections is a common area of both academic research and news media analysis. Most scrutiny and mapping of the geography of the presidential vote is done at the county scale, with counties described as either urban, suburban, or rural. Small towns are often assumed to mirror surrounding rural areas, with little research examining election results and historic patterns in these places. This is understandable: Accurate spatial data at a fine scale for national elections is difficult and, in some states, impossible, to obtain. Research presented here (in states where precinct-level data is readily available) indicates that while most small towns indeed voted Republican in the 2020 U.S. election, a closer inspection indicates that they are more Democratic-leaning than surrounding rural areas. This research indicates the value of studying these fine-scale data as well as the challenges faced in acquiring these data and resulting lack of research and visualization of these differences.

There are debates about cluster heterogeneity, network structures, and innovations. The difference in the degree to which firms joined in the internal and external networks of heterogeneous clusters can affect innovation performance. There is still a lack of empirical evidence on how networks or spatial factors can differentially affect innovation efficiency due to cluster heterogeneity. China has endogenous clusters formed by small and medium-sized firms and numerous clusters mainly based on government planning instrument, such as industrial zones and high-tech parks. There are controversies over these planned cluster, such as insufficient firm connections and weak innovation effectiveness.Cluster innovation is a complex socio-economic process that combines endogenous context, exogenous factors and interacts with multi-spatial relationships. This perspective may explain the differences in which heterogeneous clusters improve efficiency. This paper draws on first-hand data obtained from 188 questionnaires. The Lingang Equipment Manufacturing Cluster in Shanghai and the Taizhou Machine Tool Manufacturing Cluster in Zhejiang serve as examples of heterogeneous clusters. We combine the cluster's endogenous and exogenous characteristics, network size and strength of network ties, and local and non-local innovation spaces to discuss the impact on innovation efficiency. Expecting to provide a reference for improving the innovation efficiency of heterogeneous clusters in developing economies. The results suggest that regardless of local or non-local scales, exogenous clusters have a more pronounced effect of local network size and non-local tie strength on innovation performance based on demand for proximity to customers and suppliers.

Different from the market-led urbanization in western countries, China's urbanization process has the characteristics of being state-led, in which county-to-district conversion (CTDC) policy plays a key role in promoting urbanization. Our study uses the data of 279 cities as a simple to explore the effect of the state-led urbanization of CTDC on technological innovation. We find that CTDC significantly promote innovation, and this promoting effect is enhanced with the improvement of urban innovation ability. The mechanism test shows that financial expenditure on education and science, population agglomeration, information and communication technology industry are three channels for CTDC to boost technological innovation. We also find that this promotion effect is more obvious in eastern cities and the cities with higher administrative hierarchy, and is weakest in western cities, however, CTDC adjustment in northeastern cities significantly inhibited technological innovation. Further research shows that when the distance between merged county and city administrative center within 20 km, the effect is negative, after the distance is more than 20 km, with the increase of distance, the promoting effect of CTDC increases.

Industry upgrading and structure transformation are important methods for the green and sustainable development. This paper utilizes urban panel data from China spanning the years 2009–2022 to investigate the impact of manufacturing and producer services collaborative agglomeration on green economy efficiency. Additionally, it examines the mediating effect of three modes of technical change: domestic technological stock, international technology transfer, and innovation absorptive capacity. The key findings are summarized as follows: (1) The impact of Industrial collaborative agglomeration (ICA) on green economy efficiency follows a U-shaped curve relationship, when the degree of ICA is below the inflection point (1.4022), it negatively affects green economy efficiency. However, when the degree surpasses that point, it demonstrates a positive impact. (2) Domestic technological stock and international technology transfer act as mediating variables between ICA and green economy efficiency. Advancements in domestic technology innovation and increased international technology transfer contribute to a positive effect of ICA on green economic efficiency.