Growth and Change最新文献

With the swift pace of urbanization and industrialization, air pollution has emerged as a critical issue, severely impacting public health and impeding the progress toward sustainable development. This study delves into the nexus between Financial Inclusion (FI) and Air Pollution Reduction (APR), employing a balanced panel dataset that encompasses 255 Chinese prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2022. Through the application of econometric models and a series of robustness tests, we uncover an inverse U-shaped dynamic between the advancement of FI and APR. Our findings indicate that during the nascent stages of FI, there is a positive impact on APR. However, this beneficial effect plateaus and potentially reverses when FI progresses beyond an optimal threshold. Further analysis elucidates three primary economic channels through which FI may influence APR: alleviation of energy poverty, stimulation of innovation, and household consumption. Notably, these mechanisms exhibit distinct patterns of influence across cities with varying levels of economic development and geographical locations. The findings hold significant implications for policy-making, suggesting that the Chinese government must balance the acceleration of FI with a keen awareness of its regional impacts. Tailored environmental policies and innovative financial instruments can foster green growth and sustainable development.

The impact of local and global networks on innovation has been extensively studied. However, existing literature has not explored whether these effects result from territories gradually improving their networks, or competing with each other through their networks. This paper aims to address this gap by examining innovation networks in Latin American cities. Using patent data from the USPTO, we construct local networks connecting actors within cities and a global network linking different cities in different countries. We estimate the effects of networks on innovation using panel data regressions. To discern whether these effects result from cities' improvements or competition, the models follow the within-between approach. Our findings indicate that cities benefit from improvements in their local network, regardless of whether this network is worse or better than that of other territories. This is not the case in the global network, where cities compete with each other by gaining better access to resources flowing through the network. These findings hold important research and policy implications, especially for developing countries where relative backwardness, weak local networks, and limited participation in global networks may hinder territories' ability to compete with more developed counterparts.

As suburbanization accelerates globally, large-scale developments—such as new towns and redevelopment zones—are increasingly used by policymakers to alleviate urban congestion and promote spatially balanced growth. While theoretically offering superior infrastructure and living environments, such projects are complex, capital-intensive, and exposed to political and market uncertainties that can lead to misalignment between planning goals and outcomes. This study offers the first empirical analysis of population migration dynamics within the context of a large-scale new town development project. Focusing on Taiwan's National Taipei University Special District (NTPUSD), this study examines inter-district migration patterns using administrative data, with particular attention to the role of housing prices, commute times, and infrastructure access. The findings show that lower housing prices—especially when combined with shorter commutes—are significant drivers of migration. High-income households are more sensitive to price differences, while middle-income households move from moderately priced areas to upgrade housing. The price effect is minimal in low-income districts. Migration patterns also evolved over time: early migrants were predominantly young households seeking affordability, whereas later waves were influenced more by improved amenities and transport. These results offer important insights for urban planners and policymakers managing suburban growth and integration.

The high-speed railway (HSR) in China has brought tremendous economic development for cities across the country. Utilizing a dataset of over 3.9 million authorized innovated patents from 324 cities between 2000 and 2022, this study investigates the impacts of HSR on technological diversity and complexity. Employing a staggered difference-in-difference (DID), Propensity Score Matching (PSM) model and instrumental variable (IV) model, the analysis reveals that the introduction of HSR enables cities to diversify into new, less related, and more complex technological domains, thereby enhancing both the complexity and diversity of a city's knowledge base. However, our heterogeneity analysis suggests that HSR fosters breakthrough advancements and the adoption of more complex technologies in developed cities, but it mainly facilitates access to more related but less complex technologies in underdeveloped cities. This study underscores HSR as a crucial strategic tool for promoting technology diversification and knowledge complexity, while also highlighting the potential of HSR for exacerbating knowledge inequality among cities. The findings deepen our understanding of how regional inequality might be shaped as by technological evolution and transportation development.

The unbalanced pattern of population urbanization lagging behind land urbanization constrains the sustainable development of cities. Enhancing transportation infrastructure emerges as a viable strategy to mitigate urbanization imbalance. This study investigates how HSR and subway can address urbanization imbalance in Chinese cities, which have witnessed the most intensive urbanization and transportation infrastructure development in the 21st century. Employing panel data of 279 cities from 2006 to 2021 and utilizing a DID methodology, the empirical analysis reveals that HSR operation significantly promotes population inflow and enhances land use efficiency, effectively mitigating urbanization imbalance. The mechanism stems from HSR-induced polycentric spatial restructuring, which expands population agglomeration spaces. Critically, subway networks functionally integrate emerging subcenters with primary urban cores, creating synergistic effects with HSR to optimize urban spatial structures. However, peripheral cities, hampered by the lack of subway connectivity, fail to leverage HSR to alleviate urbanization imbalance. These findings underscore that multimodal transport systems are essential for enhancing cooperative accessibility and achieving urbanization rebalance.

This paper examines the impact of cities' network connections on regional labor market integration in megacity-regions. By applying a panel model to data for the Yangtze River Delta between 2014 and 2021, we analyze the impact of transport networks on labor market integration and explore the (potential) mechanisms in terms of network externalities. Our empirical analysis suggests a positive association between connectivity in transport networks and labor market integration. We also observe evidence of indirect effects: transport networks allow cities to benefit from network externalities associated with effective labor matching, specifically by reducing geographical distance restrictions and lowering matching costs, thus contributing to the increased integration of labor markets. We reflect on the broader implications of our empirical findings for regional development strategies and discuss possible avenues for further research.

From the perspective of financialization motivation, this study empirically investigates the impact and mechanism of economic policy uncertainty on firm financialization using data from China's A-share listed firms from 2010 to 2021. The results show that economic policy uncertainty has a positive effect on firm financialization, and the effect is more significant when uncertainty is high. Moreover, economic policy uncertainty promotes firm financialization by enhancing the “precautionary saving” motivation and inhibits firm financialization by alleviating the “profit chasing” motivation, and the “precautionary saving” motivation has a greater impact. Both financing constraints and executive financial experience play a positive moderation role. And there is heterogeneity in financial asset categories and marketization degree.