Growth and Change最新文献

The Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) hypothesis has been widely debated in pollution studies, and its applicability to grassland ecosystems remains fragmented, particularly regarding the mechanisms driving inflection point shifts. This study presents the Grassland Environmental Kuznets Curve (GEKC) framework, using high-resolution county-level panel data (2000–2022) from China's pastoral regions to model grassland degradation and recovery dynamics. With System GMM estimation for endogeneity, a robust U-shaped GEKC is found: economic growth first degrades grasslands but shifts to restoration beyond a threshold. Notably, the GEKC inflection point arrives earlier in economically developed regions and temperate continental climate zones, suggesting regional heterogeneity in grassland responses to economic development. Four key pathways influencing the GEKC inflection point shift are identified: the grassland scarcity pathway reducing resource competition through land use optimization and efficient livestock practices; the grassland governance pathway enhancing ecological stewardship via policy interventions; the land intensification pathway boosting productivity with technological advancements; and the livelihood transition pathway lessening anthropogenic pressures through income diversification. These findings challenge the conventional EKC paradigm by demonstrating that strategic policy sequencing—prioritizing governance in early developmental stages and market mechanisms post-inflection—can decouple economic growth from grassland degradation.

Regional economic disparities and unbalanced economic growth have led to a lack of essential capabilities and cohesion among individual economies. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) serves as a driver for host countries' leadership to align their national development programs with the Chinese initiative. This paper applies the China-Kazakhstan context, which is particularly interesting to explore due to Kazakhstan's central position as the main hub of the BRI economic corridors. Building on the theoretical perspectives of legitimacy and bargaining power, the research shows how geopolitics influence the bargaining power of China and the host country at the country, firm, and SEZ levels, creating spillover effects for third countries involved. The BRI has become an important enabler for government and institutional initiatives, such as the supranational cross-border development of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), inter-organizational cooperative projects, and others, improving Kazakhstan's relative position in the region, attracting foreign direct investment (FDI), and transforming the country into a strong regional player. Based on a cross-level analysis of the BRI and Kazakhstan's economic growth, the research develops a conceptual framework supported by a set of propositions. The study proposes that Chinese investments have had a considerable impact on Kazakhstan's development, even though there are some challenges, particularly those linked to the negative public perception of the BRI.

This paper empirically analyzes the relationship between pharmaceutical industry agglomeration and enterprise innovation based on drug registration application data and pharmaceutical enterprise data in China, and explores the mechanism of the role of agglomeration in influencing innovation from a perspective of research and development (R&D) cooperation networks. It was found that the spatial agglomeration of pharmaceutical firms significantly enhanced innovation and that agglomeration contributed to innovation through three transmission pathways of R&D cooperation networks, which were whether firms were in the network, their location in the network, and the diversity of their partners in the network. The further discussion shows that there is significant regional heterogeneity in the transmission mechanism of pharmaceutical industry agglomeration through R&D cooperation networks and thus affects innovation. The results of the study provide useful insights into how to take advantage of agglomeration and further understand the relationship between agglomeration and innovation.

This study investigates the relationship between commercial business continuity and regional characteristics, specifically, agglomeration externalities, in Seoul, South Korea, while accounting for random effects. Key findings reveal that, first, specialized retail areas experience lower closure probabilities. Second, increased related diversity increases closure probabilities, whereas higher unrelated diversity reduces them, illustrating the impact of diversity on continuity. Third, when comparing the agglomeration externalities of retail areas and their surroundings, higher unrelated diversity in the surrounding areas increases the probability of closure. Fourth, commercial development in surrounding areas, rather than within retail areas, enhances overall functionality and reduces closure probability. These results examine the positive and negative effects of agglomeration externalities on commercial businesses in Seoul, South Korea, presenting findings that specifically reflect the characteristics of the surrounding areas. In the context of future sustainable urban management, retail area management should be based on a macroscopic perspective that includes surrounding areas.

The potential of the digital economy to mitigate resource dependence by affecting industrial structure is a topic of great significance for the transformation of resource-based cities. This paper presents a digital economy development index and employs data sourced from 102 Chinese resource-based cities from 2011 to 2019 to investigate the impact of the digital economy on resource dependence in resource-based cities. The findings of this study can be summarized as follows: (1) The digital economy has an inhibitory effect on resource dependence. (2) By decomposing industrial structure upgrading into industrial structure rationalization and industrial structure advancement, it becomes evident that the digital economy reduces resource dependence by facilitating industrial structure advancement. (3) The digital economy exerts a more pronounced negative influence in the eastern and central regions, thereby substantiating the presence of regional heterogeneity. This study elucidates the extent to which the digital economy mitigates resource dependence and offers invaluable insights for guiding the transformation of resource-based cities.

Shift-share analysis (SSA) is a widely used tool for studying economic changes, particularly in employment, due to its simplicity and minimal data requirements. However, its reliance on crude growth rates and issues associated with aggregation can lead to biases, such as Simpson's Paradox, that may hide regional and industry-specific insights. Multifactor Partitioning (MFP) addresses these limitations by standardizing growth rates in a way that disentangles industry and regional effects. This paper compares SSA and MFP using employment data from 10 U.S. states between 2005 and 2019. The analysis incorporates three levels of disaggregation: (1) aggregate employment and time, (2) disaggregated employment with aggregated time, and (3) both sectoral and temporal disaggregation. Results show that while SSA and MFP yield similar conclusions at an aggregate level, discrepancies emerge in disaggregated analyses, particularly in high-growth regions. These findings highlight the importance of data disaggregation and MFP's capacity to provide nuanced insights for policymakers and researchers.

This paper contributes to the literature on the effects of institutions on economic growth by addressing a topic that has been little explored. Specifically, it uses Colombia's capital cities as a case study for the period 2007–2020 to examine the impact of business formality on local economic performance. To do so, an ad hoc variable is constructed to be incorporated into a beta convergence growth approach. The model, estimated using GLS and GMM techniques, yields quite robust results, indicating that increased formality has significantly raised per capita income. Additionally, the findings show a reduction in disparities among urban centers in Colombia, with a convergence speed that is by no means negligible. Finally, a spatial GMM framework is proposed to capture the potential influence of neighboring cities. This new approach confirms, on one hand, the role of formalization in stimulating productive activity, and on the other hand, underscores that the convergence process is driven not only by city-specific factors but also by inter-city relationships, particularly spillover effects from wealthier urban areas.

This paper aims to examine the Foreign direct investment (FDI) effect on household income equality in Vietnam. The authors applied the panel data regressions including fixed effect model and quantile model for all provinces of Vietnam from 2010 to 2022. The empirical results show that foreign direct investment can have both positive and negative effects on income inequality. Foreign direct investment may not have a direct impact on each specific income group, but it can alleviate income inequality between groups in the short term. Moreover, foreign direct investment reduces income inequality in high-income groups, but increases income inequality between groups. The authors find that ensuring social equity in general and reducing income inequality in particular play an important role in stabilizing society, leading to sustainable development, especially for developing countries like Vietnam. Therefore, this paper suggests that foreign direct investment attraction and utilization policies need to be linked to social security policies that reduce income inequality.