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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 explores how vulnerable consumers within systematic constraints of economic inequality, institutional barriers, and social segregation in an urban environment cope with their vulnerabilities to achieve their well‐being. Taking China's internal migrant workers as a research context, our study examines their vulnerable experiences and reveals the impact of systematic constraints on migrant workers' self‐perception, interpretation, and actions. It discovers a staged process through which migrant workers acquire resilience to optimize life satisfaction by fulfilling a sense of control over their migration life. Through a situated approach to capture the contextual impact of systematic constraints on vulnerability experiences and the construction of resilient pathways to achieve well‐being, this paper puts forward critical welfare issues such as inclusive marketplace, social capital, and community empowerment which are important to migrants' social integration and capability building. This calls for more coordinated efforts to promote effective resilience building and sustained well‐being among resource‐constrained consumers. [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]

Cities are not only connected through conventional infrastructure, but also through digital infrastructure. This paper tests whether digital connectivity patterns follow traditional ones. Using a generalized spatial interaction model, this paper shows that geography (and distance) still matters for an extensive set of world cities. With a view to the rapidly rising urbanization, the attention is next focused on the emerging large cities in China to test the relevance of distance frictions − next to a broad set of other important explanatory variables − for digital connectivity. Various interesting results are found regarding digital connectivity within the Chinese urban system, while also here geography appears to play an important role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper applies Jones' test for the empirical validity of AK-type models to the Chinese economy over the period 1952-2006 (Jones C. I., Quarterly Journal of Economics, 110, 1995a, 495-525). We aim to establish whether large permanent movements in the physical investment rate cause permanent movements in output growth. The evidence indicates that the one-sector AK model cannot be rejected. We also find that augmenting the model to allow for transitional dynamics-via imbalances in factor endowments, structural transformation, and R&D-based technology transfer-does a better job in describing China's growth dynamics than the basic AK model. ( JEL C22, O41, O47) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]