Growth and Change最新文献

In urbanization, achieving common prosperity is a common complication faced by human society in the process of development. The citizenship of the agricultural transfer population (CRM) is a vital urbanization goal in developing countries. However, there is rare empirical evidence on the citizenship of agricultural migrants and property income. The relaxation of household registration restrictions and property policy changes under China's new urbanization plan provide crucial material for the test of their causal effects. The results of this study suggest that the citizenship of the agricultural transfer population can be divided into two stages: identity conversion and service sharing. Both the initial household registration conversion and the later service sharing are conducive to the growth of property income of the residents who have switched from agriculture to non-agriculture. Besides, the increase in transfer length of the “rural-to-non-native” residents further strengthens the positive effect of service parity on property income. This implies that governments and relevant authorities in developing countries should emphasize the construction of a policy system for equalizing basic public services to facilitate the reduction of income disparity while stimulating economic growth. Additionally, the mechanism analysis reveals that the underlying logic of the citizenship of agricultural migrants lies in the ability to enrich total property, adjust asset allocation behavior, reinforce the efficiency of financial asset allocation, and achieve an increase in property income. The quantitative results of this study provide effective information for future sustainable urban development, especially for rational urbanization in developing countries.

The labor movement from rural areas and the remittance flow from migrants is a common household livelihood strategy in rural Bangladesh. While migration can offer economic benefits through remittances, it can be a source of hardship for migrants and their families due to societal culture. This study examines the differences in farm productivity and technical efficiency between female and male labor migrants by focusing on female and male laborers who have lived away from their homes for 6 months or more within the country and its reflection on farm production. Using data on 2271 rice plots from Bangladesh Integrated Households Survey in 2018, we estimate plot-level stochastic meta-frontier approach for households with female-labor migrants and male-labor migrants separately emphasizing technological difference and heteroskedastic technical efficiency. The empirical result shows that the female-labor migrants' farms have 10.3% lower production frontier (maximum frontier yield) and 6.1% higher technical efficiency than male migrants' farms, indicating that they have 4.2% lower productivity. Lower production frontier reflects lower management ability and less attention to farm practice. Moreover, the study reveals that female-labor migrants' farms are closer to the meta-frontier, suggesting smaller technology gaps. However, some farmers failed to achieve the highest possible output in relation to the meta-frontier, indicating that farmers can boost their production by adopting and disseminating new rice production technology.

New models of agglomeration cast the urban productivity premium as the outcome of agglomeration economies, a spatial sorting of skilled entrepreneurs and greater selection effects leading to less, but more productive businesses. We provide descriptive evidence of the spatial distribution of growing early-stage businesses in Chile that concurs with the theory. We show, first, that while business entry rates increase systematically with the size of a region, the rates of growing early-stage businesses are not related to the levels of agglomeration. Second, we show that, on the contrary, average early-stage business productivity, the levels of human capital and business exit rates all relate positively with agglomeration. Third, we estimate regression models that verify the expected relationships between agglomeration factors and regional growing early-stage-business activity. The results for Chile suggest that the disadvantages of agglomeration largely offset the benefits, and therefore there is no obvious location penalty to venturing in peripheral areas. Entrepreneurship policies in less-developed countries should not target excessively to specific industries and regions, as they might curtail an entrepreneurial potential that is ubiquitous.

As land is one of the most important production factors in rural areas, it is becoming an important challenge for rural revitalization strategy to realize land value and promote the socioeconomic development of villages through the collective action of self-organized collective land use. Various studies have discussed the relationships among land governance, rural revitalization and self-organization, but few studies have focused on village cadres' roles and village rules. This paper aims to establish an analytical framework to explore these two operating mechanisms of self-organization in collective land use. Two villages in eastern China and one village in western China are selected as typical cases to demonstrate how collective land use is self-organized by village cadres' roles and village rules. The results indicate that village cadres play roles in the entrepreneurial spirit and resource access capacity to promote village economic and social development. In the utilization of collective land for farmers to live in peace and work happily, the configuration of rules at the village level to regulate the behaviour of villagers is a qualification on demand and “see who can take part”, cost sharing and benefit sharing, graduated sanction and supervision. The analysis in this article may provide an understanding of the mechanism driving the promotion and improvement of land self-organization, which has important policy implications for China and other developing countries adopting this mode to promote regional economic development in rural areas.

Green innovation (GI) can enable win‒win style economic and ecological benefits. Using China's pilot scheme for the construction of the intellectual property protection (IPP) system as an example, this paper empirically tests the impact of IPP system reform on the GI level and its spatial spillover effect. The results show that IPP system reform has significantly promoted urban GI, indicating that a progressive reform model characterized by experimentalist governance is applicable to innovation policy practices in developing countries. The dynamic effect analysis shows that IPP system reform can be applied to continuously promote urban GI. The mechanism analysis shows that such use of IPP system reform can improve the level of urban GI by promoting investment and talent agglomeration, confirming the viewpoint of the institutionalist school. The heterogeneity analysis shows that IPP system reform plays a stronger role in promoting GI in peripheral cities than in central cities, in cities with lower rather than higher scientific and educational levels and in cities with weaker rather than stronger GI capacity. Consistent with the theory of institutional diffusion, IPP system reform has a significant spatial spillover effect, promoting GI activities in surrounding cities while working to improve the local GI level. This paper affirms the effectiveness of the pilot regional innovation policy with Chinese characteristics, with important theoretical significance.

Scholars have written descriptively about the relationship between suburbanization and central city decline. However, research has not produced systematic, quantitative estimates of the relationships between the components of suburbanization and vacancy—generally or amid urban decline. Such estimates are required to design effective policies that could protect against the social inequalities associated with such development patterns. This paper applies an economic framework of suburbanization and vacancy to 99 urbanized areas in the United States to estimate the impact on central city residential vacancy from 2013 to 2019. The results support the central hypothesis, that regional over-building contributes to central city vacancy, and that this impact is significantly magnified by the context of decline. Results show regional over-building causes central city vacancy in Shrinking Cities at 9.6 times the effect observed in other Principal Cities. Ameliorating factors vary between Shrinking and Non-Shrinking contexts.

Previous research suggests that having more self-employed or entrepreneurs can contribute to higher levels of economic growth in distressed areas. Additionally, self-employment in certain industries may be more beneficial to growth. Other research has linked industrial diversity to entrepreneurship and regional growth, especially in urban areas. However, the relationship between industrial diversity, self-employment, and growth in lagging or distressed regions is less clear. To examine these linkages in distressed areas, we first identify a group of distressed counties based on historic data. Then, using detailed industry-level self-employment data, we appraise whether having more self-employed from certain industries is associated with regional growth. We also analyze the relationship between industrial diversity and overall growth and the propensity to be self-employed. The results suggest that having more self-employment overall and in some key industries is associated with more employment growth in distressed counties. We also find that the relationship between economic diversity and self-employment varies by industry and region.

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.

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.

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.