Growth and Change最新文献

Industrial exit plays a critical role in shaping regional industrial dynamics. Evolutionary economic geography studies often use co-occurrence and density methods to assess the likelihood of related and unrelated industries exiting a region. However, these traditional methods lack the ability to quantitatively distinguish related from unrelated exiting industries. This paper addresses this gap by introducing a novel quantitative method for differentiating related and unrelated exiting industries. We then explore the correlation between (un)related exits and economic complexity using data from the China Customs Database (2000–2012). The findings suggest that related exits dominate China's industrial exit paths, with relatively few unrelated exits, and the disparity between them is widening. Second, a significant and positive correlation between related exits and economic complexity is observed, while unrelated exits display a significant and negative correlation. Third, differences emerge between related and unrelated exits across various sectors and regions in China. The novel method for distinguishing related and unrelated exit industries holds the potential for application in other countries and regions, contributing to a more precise understanding of the patterns of regional industrial exit.

In the context of the nearby enrollment policy in China, parents’ pursuit of good educational resources has driven up the prices of school district housing. Concerning this situation, the Education Department of Zhejiang Province released the enrollment warning information for primary schools in October 2018. This information disclosure aims to guide parents to purchase housing rationally by publishing the lists of schools exceeding their enrollment capacity. Despite the policy’s practical meaning, its impact remains underexplored. Using Hangzhou, China as the study area, the current study quantitatively analyzes the effectiveness of enrollment warning disclosure through the housing market. With housing transaction data from 2018 to 2019, the study constructs the hedonic price model, difference-in-differences model, and quantile regression model to identify both average and heterogeneous effects. The results indicate that school quality is significantly capitalized into housing prices and the disclosure of enrollment warning information intensifies price differentiation between warning and non-warning primary school districts. In particular, the high-priced housing market is more sensitive to information disclosure with stronger responses observed among upper quantiles. Rather than mitigating demand, the release of the information reinforces homebuyers’ preference for high-quality schools. The empirical results and implications of this study are helpful to the continuation and optimization of warning information policy, contributing to education equity and sustainable urban development.

This paper incorporates water demand decisions by households and firms into an urban spatial model. Using both land-use and water demand data from the Denver Water service area, I calibrate the model to focus on four policy options to reduce urban water demand: (1) a “cash-for-grass” proposal to reduce irrigated lawn area, (2) relaxing development regulations to increase housing supply, (3) lowering the price of recycled water, and (4) raising the marginal price of potable water. The “cash-for-grass” policy reduces water demand, yet the policy is both costly and leads to an increase in the average household yard size. Loosening development regulations may lead to either a rise or fall in aggregate water demand. Lowering the price of recycled water increases demand by firms but lowers revenue for the water district. Numerical simulations suggest that raising marginal water rates are the most effective means of reducing aggregate water demand.

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.