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This paper examines the productivity advantage of large cities for creative industries (CIs) in China. Using Chinese firm‐level data for CIs from 2012 to 2014, we find that agglomeration economies, rather than firm selection, determine the difference between the productivity distributions of CIs in large and small cities. There are heterogeneous effects of agglomeration economies, with stronger impacts on productive firms and firms in broadcasting and TV & film. We also find that the productivity advantage of large cities for CIs is stronger when the cities have better communication and transportation infrastructure. Our results imply that the efficacy of place‐based policies for developing CIs depends on local infrastructure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid increase in the number of returning Chinese scientists in past years has fostered an uneven geography of academic capital in China. Yet, this noteworthy issue has scarcely been discussed in recent literature. This paper attempts to testify whether there is an effect of urban amenities on the location choice of the returning scientists listed by China's Youth Scholar Thousand Talent Plan (YSTTP). Applying a city‐level conditional logit model of skilled migration, it is suggested that YSTTP scientists were substantially driven by urban amenities, such as the scientific environment, and public infrastructures and services for elite residence. In particular, considerable attention was paid to high‐level academic institutions, public transports, healthcare, income, and R&D capability. In contrast, YSTTP scientists were less sensitive to natural amenities and cost of living. Meanwhile, there is evident heterogeneity in the significance of urban amenities among different social groups in terms of their gender, age, whether they choose to work in Alma mater, and where they return from. This study contributes to bridging the current literature of scientific mobility with the amenity‐based approach, and ultimately provides a critical reference for the brain gain policy in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the implications of the political incentive system reform for industrial land supply. We study the stronger political incentive for environmental protection in China that resulted from the Cadre Evaluation System (CES) reform in 2013. Using the interaction of municipalities' pre‐CES environmental quality with the introduction of CES reform, we document dirty cities experience a significantly larger decline in industrial land supply following the reform. Also, the reform may have a larger impact on dirtier industries and wealthier cities, and our baseline results are mainly driven by the local leaders who are more likely to be promoted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the difference‐in‐differences method, this paper employs a unique government land transaction dataset at the individual level and investigates how much extra government revenue is generated by the Shanghai Disney Resort through land value appreciation in nearby areas. The results suggest that the Shanghai Disney project significantly increases the nearby land value and then increases local extra government revenue. The average annual extra growth rate was 9.81% (37.01 billion CNY) of Shanghai government revenue from 2009 to 2015 through nearby land value appreciation after the approval of the Shanghai Disney project in 2009. There also exists a heterogeneous impact of the Shanghai Disney project on different types of land value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper investigates the institutional mechanism behind increasing local government debts and default risk in the last decade in China. Using prefectural‐level data from 2010 to 2017, we study the default risk on local government debts through the lens of spatial interactions. Empirical results identify positive spatial interactions of default risk among political neighbouring cities, but not for merely geographic or economic neighbours. Moreover, the spatial interactions vary with local leader's political incentives. These findings altogether suggest the spatial interactions of default risk is driven by political competition among local leaders. The study also rules out alternative explanations such as resource flow effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of the "information age" ushered in renewed expectations of systematic urban spatial structure transformation. However, few studies have quantitatively assessed these changes, especially the decentralisation of manufacturing employment. This paper tests hypotheses regarding the decentralisation–centralisation effect of information and communication technology (ICT) on manufacturing. Further, the work employs an IV‐GMM estimation technique to estimate the models, to alleviate potential bias brought by endogeneity. The results suggest that the adoption of ICT is highly related to the decentralisation of manufacturing employment on the city‐proper scale in China. The conclusion drawn is that ICT has shaped the manufacturing decentralisation of cities in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the role of selective migration policies in the self‐selection of migrants, taking China's specific household registration (hukou) system as a case study. We first incorporate the hukou system into the self‐selection framework, demonstrating that it leads to a U‐shaped selection pattern of migrants from inland to coastal regions. Based on four periods of census data in China, we further employed the binary logit and conditional logit models to verify our proposed theory. The results imply that the hukou system influences migrant selection through restricting hukou‐related social amenities and distorting return to education by wage discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses whether high‐speed rail (HSR) construction in China promotes urban economic growth, and it uses social network analysis (SNA) and a panel threshold model. We provide robust evidence that HSR networks have non‐linear effects on the urban economy. Urban location and transportation hub status change as the density of HSR networks increases, and from 2008 to 2017, the national average annual growth rate of the weighted degree centrality (WDC) was 44.93%. We find the WDC and betweenness centrality (BC) have positive influences on urban economic growth. However, HSR network expansion reduces the economic benefits of HSR because the marginal contribution of new HSR lines to economic productivity decreases and there is a crowding out effect caused by excessive agglomeration. HSR networks can promote the economy of Western China to a greater extent and can promote the economy more in small cities than in large and medium‐sized cities. These findings can help the government rationalize its strategy for designing HSR lines in various regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Regional inequality in the process of economic growth has recently been a popular topic. This paper creatively proposes contribution decomposition methods to divide various regions' contributions into economic contribution and population contribution. The methods consider not only economic growth but also population change, which may be more effective than the traditional method that uses the per capita GDP (gross domestic product) as its single measurement indicator. Moreover, the objective is to take a step forward and reveal the spatio‐temporal evolution characteristics of regional disparities by integrating barycentre model and economic development equilibrium model. Lastly, the applicability of the research method proposed in this paper is verified by a case study of Jiangsu province, China; the results show a new regional economic pattern in Jiangsu province. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates determinants of science and technology parks (STPs) performance in China. We estimate dynamic panel‐data models on a sample comprising 53 STPs for 2008–2018. Foreign direct investment and human capital impact labour productivity and innovation of STPs and explain differences in performance among them. We find evidence for beta‐ and sigma‐convergence of labour productivity and beta‐, but not sigma‐convergence of innovation. Our study provides novel insights for research on STPs and innovation policy regarding heterogeneity in performance of STPs, and specifically, some evidence concerning formation of "clubs" of STPs based on the city‐tier system in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using high‐speed railway construction as a natural experiment, this paper contributes to our understanding of how passenger‐oriented transportation infrastructure affects inter‐regional trade. The findings show that trade value increases and market segmentation decreases with high‐speed railway (HSR) expansion, indicating that movement of people fosters movement of freight. The heterogeneous analyses suggest that technology‐intensive industries and provinces with poorer pre‐existing ICT level are impacted more. The impact is driven by a substitution effect between HSR and conventional railways in passenger transportation service, and by accelerated information exchange and knowledge spillover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cross‐city spillovers among housing markets are usually modelled by the classical spatial autoregressive models, which usually suffer from identification problems in practice. This paper investigates the cross‐city house price spillovers arising from city network externalities wherein a city's connections with other cities in the urban network create the external house price premium through productivity and amenity gains. Using a cross‐sectional data set for an urban system in eastern China, we present significant evidence for positive network spillovers by the application of spatial lag of X model and spatial Durbin error model. Besides, common shocks are also proved to be responsible for cross‐city dependence of house prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the localized effect of clusters of universities by exploiting a university town (UT) construction boom in China. We show that UT establishment has generated positive impact on local night‐time light density and population concentration. The UT effect is much localized, and completely decays within 10 km. We emphasize the role of knowledge spillover and find that UT establishment has increased local human capital level. The number of high skill labors as well as high‐tech firms has experienced higher growth in UT districts, as they benefited more from knowledge spillovers. Finally, we find that land prices in the UT have appreciated by 7%‐12% using a unique dataset of land parcel transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the convergence of innovation activity across Chinese provinces and untangle how such activity has evolved between 1987 and 2020. Our study reveals which factors matter for innovation and how the significance and relative importance of different factors changed over time. To capture this evolution, we distinguish between three key time periods and identify the existence of temporal effects. We further find that depending on the time‐period, regional innovation activity in China has developed in at least three innovation convergence clubs. We offer useful insights, with theory and policy implications, of the roots of regional innovation convergence and the causes of geographical disparities in China's innovation activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the causal relationship between financial development and the urban–rural income gap in China. Using a bootstrap Granger panel causality analysis, the result indicates that financial development influences urban–rural income gap mainly in Eastern China. The high level of financial development in this region enables rural areas to increase its income. Our results also confirm the existence of the financial Kuznets curve in Eastern China where urban–rural income gap would be first increased and afterwards decreased by financial development. The financial development itself is not dependent on urban–rural income gap as it largely depends on government policies and economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon a panel dataset on China's state‐owned construction land supply at the prefecture level, this paper adopts the spatial panel data model to investigate the existence of spatial dependence in the mechanisms behind China's urban land expansion from 2004 to 2014. The empirical results show that China's urban land expansion has been mainly influenced by a quadruple process of urbanization, industrialization, globalization and decentralization. The strong existence of spatial dependence in China's urban land expansion can be reflected by the significant coefficient estimates of the spatial lags of both the dependent variable and independent variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the relationship between community attributes and the subway home-price capitalization effect, asking whether the magnitude of the subway proximity premium is affected by neighbourhood economic status and location. Using longitudinal data from Beijing, the paper estimates that decreasing a community's distance to a subway station by 10 per cent increases the housing price per square metre by 0.2 per cent ~ 0.9 per cent. The paper also shows that, subway capitalization effect is around 0.1 per cent ~ 0.2 per cent lower for communities that have higher quality and charge a 1 Yuan higher property management fee. Moreover, the analysis also reveals that the subway capitalization will decrease by around 0.08 per cent as a community's distance to the central business district (CBD) increases by 1 km. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government-funded urban amenities provide significant values to land markets. This paper uses spatial econometric techniques to recover the puzzling heterogeneity in capitalized values of local amenities such as higher education facilities, transport and environmental amenities. On top of its policy implications, this paper differentiates between non-spatial models and spatial models to allow spatially varying marginal-price estimates and reflect the subtle ways that land markets capitalize local amenities. Our results provide heterogeneous estimates of capitalized amenity values that would affect land development, illustrating the linkage between government-funded amenities and the intensity of land development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon township-level data on high-tech firms of Nanjing, China, this paper adopts a spatial econometric approach to examining the existence of spatial dependence and heterogeneity in the location processes of high-tech firms. The results show that some locational determinants of neighbouring townships exert significant impacts on the attractiveness of a certain township for high-tech firms. Besides, the marginal effects of some locational determinants are found to vary across space. In general, these results point to the need to account for both inter-territorial spillovers and cross-spatial variance in the investigation of factors that influence high-tech firm location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of land tenure security perceptions on rural-urban migration decisions of rural households, using data collected in Minle County in Northwest China. We find that tenure security perceptions play a significant role in household migration decisions in villages without well-functioning land rental markets but not in villages where the land rental markets are more developed. In villages with underdeveloped land rental markets, households that expect that no land reallocations will occur within their village in the near future are less involved in migration, while households that attach a greater importance to land certificates in protecting land use rights are more involved in migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the size distribution of exporting and non-exporting firms in a panel of Chinese provinces. The power law exponents of exporting firms are significantly less than those of non-exporting firms. The average power law exponents fell from 0.74 in 1998 to 0.64 in 2007 for exporting firms, and from 1.03 in 1998 to 0.83 in 2007 for non-exporting firms. Further analysis showed that credit constraints have a significant negative effect on the exponents of the size distribution of exporting firms, suggesting that smaller firms are more credit-constrained than larger firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper estimates the impact of industrial agglomeration on firm-level productivity in Chinese manufacturing sectors. To account for spatial autocorrelation across regions, we formulate a hierarchical spatial model and use a Bayesian instrumental-variable approach. We find that agglomeration of the same industry (i.e., localization) has a productivity-boosting effect, but agglomeration of urban population (i.e., urbanization) has no such effect. In addition, the localization effect increases with the educational levels of employees and the share of intermediate inputs in gross output. These results may suggest that agglomeration externalities occur through knowledge spillovers and input sharing among firms producing similar manufactures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the spatial patterns and determinants of China's interprovincial skilled migration by using data from 2005 one per cent population sample survey. While the coastal region benefits from the influx of skilled labour, the rest of China suffers from severe brain drain. Estimates from zero-inflated negative binomial gravity models indicate that employment opportunities, especially interregional wage differentials, play a dominant role in attracting skilled labour, and that the impact of amenities on skilled migration turns out to be small and less clear. Findings suggest that China's skilled people prioritize their career prospects over the quality of life in the migration decision-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses Ripley's K‐function to examine the diversity in cross‐region labor mobility under various border effects from heterogeneous policies. Based on manufacturing labour data for Chinese cities, we emphasize the importance of border effects in the formation of regional integration with a Ripley's K‐function analysis. The statistical measures indicate that the amount of labour mobility involves distance‐decay effects of the border. However, the variety in the distance‐decay of the border effects differs considerably between each pair of adjacent regions. For this reason, transport costs caused by natural or economic geography probably explained most of the differences in border effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using 2003–2016 panel data of 278 prefecture‐level Chinese cities, we analysed the relationship between highway construction, resource flow, and urban–rural income gap using multiple spatial econometric models. Overall highway construction has narrowed the urban–rural income gap owing to better population mobility and goods flow. However, while goods flow has narrowed the gap, population mobility has aggravated it. A regional difference in the impact of highway construction also exists, that is, the effect is negative in central and western cities, but positive for eastern cities. Moreover, China's "4 trillion" fiscal and currency stimulus plan has strengthened highway construction in narrowing the income gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes the use of push‐pull‐mooring model to investigate the main factors behind farmers' willingness to withdraw from rural homesteads with unique survey datasets taken from a pilot area in China. Our empirical results, which were derived from partial least squares structural equation modelling, mostly support our theoretical hypotheses, suggesting that policy cognition is a meaningful moderating factor that reflects farmers' individual attitudes, environmental influences, and social norms and plays a significant role in farmers' decision‐making processes. Our findings have strong policy implications for developing a "strategy of rural vitalization" and reforming the current rural homesteads system in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between rural labour transfer and cultivated land use has always been a hot topic in academic field and government management. Here, by using the large‐scale survey data of 1,868 farmers from 37 villages in Jianghan Plain and the low‐hill areas in southeastern Hubei province, we investigated the relationship between rural labour force transfer and decision‐making in cultivated land use from the perspective of terrain heterogeneity. The findings indicate that under different terrain conditions, there are significant differences in the decision‐making of farmers concerning cultivated land use, leading to different land use efficiencies in different areas. Specifically, rural labour force transfer enhances land use efficiency in plain areas; however, it does not affect that in the low‐hill areas. In addition, we found that in the plain areas, improving the quality of rural household labour can increase the cultivated land use efficiency, while in low‐hill areas, enhancement of geographical accessibility is the key to improving land use efficiency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International organizations approach economies classification differently. This investigation aims to explore a classification framework, named as thresholds of economy groupings, to obtain the thresholds for easily classifying economies. The framework is applied to classify provinces in mainland China, and the resulting thresholds provide instructional values reflecting macroeconomic situation. One result is that the average value of the relative gross domestic product per capita is roughly equal to the threshold between groupings 3 and 4 of five ones during 2009–2014, which implies regional disparities and balanced policy requirement in China. Furthermore, dynamic development tracks are described as different kinds of shapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyse a sample of nearly 300 prefectural‐level cities in China, among which about half historically had city walls. We document that cities that had walls in late imperial China have higher population and employment density today, despite that their walls have long gone. Using data from various sources, we test whether a historically walled city's higher density can be explained by a historical urban core, a different industry composition, a different local geography, a compact urban shape, or more valuable rural land in surrounding areas. We find that historically walled cities still have higher density after taking into account all of these factors, which we interpret as evidence of economic persistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the role of local climate conditions in spurring interregional migration in China over the period 2000 to 2010. We developed a robust empirical approach based on a correlated random effects model and a prefecture‐level panel dataset which allows us to account for both within province migration flows and prefecture‐specific characteristics. Empirical results reveal that climate conditions are important determinants of migration in China. Specifically, prefectures with warmer winter, cooler summer, and more available sunshine are more attractive to migrants. Economic factors such as income level and employment opportunities are also important drivers of population growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study empirically the effects of five different dimensions of agglomeration – specialization, diversity, related variety, unrelated variety, and city size – on the survival chances of new entrepreneurial firms in China. Consideration is further given to studying the mediating effects of local subsidies on new firm survival given different existing local industrial structures in those regions. In support of the ‘regional branching’ hypothesis, we find that increasing local related variety has a stronger positive effect on new firm survival than other types of agglomeration. We also find that receiving comparatively fewer subsidies motivates firms to seek out and benefit from local existing economies, which in turn, positively influence their chances of survival. By contrast, agglomerated firms that receive relatively more subsidies tend to be more likely to face financial distress leading to eventual market exit. The findings thus reveal that both the intensity and the location of state support matters in terms of optimizing positive agglomeration effects on firms' post‐entry performance and survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study estimates how highways affected industrial development in China's peripheral regions between 1998 and 2007, a period during which China experienced rapid growth in highway mileage. Highways between major cities pass through some counties but not others. Based on this difference in counties' access to highways, we conduct a difference-in-difference propensity score matching estimation, with the treatment variables being counties' highway connection status and their industrial performance before and after being connected to a highway. We find that highways promote industrial development in counties with higher output and greater investment levels. Moreover, highways have differential impacts across industries and regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study develops a method to decompose total national indirect value added effects (induced by final demand) into intraregional effects and interregional spillovers. The decomposition is applied to China's 2002 and 2007 interregional input-output tables with foreign-owned processing exports separated from normal exports. First, we find that interregional spillovers account for one quarter to one half of the total national indirect value added multipliers in 2007, with the largest spillovers occurring for the coastal regions. This finding is important when explaining regional value added generation and thus has real implications for regional policy programmes. Second, we develop a new measure, namely, 'net interregional value added spillovers' to position China's individual regions in the global production chains. This measure shows that upstream regions in the Centre, Northwest and Southwest of China are net recipients of interregional value added spillovers generated by foreign exports in coastal regions. Over time, this observation becomes more pronounced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Applying the methodology developed by Duranton and Overman, we analyse localization and dispersion of firms in China. Using a unique and detailed dataset on manufacturing firms in China, we are able to follow the changes in location patterns of firms between 2002 and 2008. Our analysis shows that firms in China are more localized than in the UK or Japan. Localization is comparable to that in the US, and takes place at relatively small scales that are consistent with the size of Chinese cities. Localization increases rapidly, even in the relative short period between 2002 and 2008, especially new entrants localize. Private firms, firms from Hong-Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and foreign firms are more localized than state-owned firms. Our findings are consistent with the notion that China is increasingly liberalizing its economy, enabling (profit seeking) manufacturing firms to benefit from agglomeration economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]