City Size, Population Concentration and Productivity: Evidence from China

Shen, Jie; Chen, Chunlai; Yang, Mengyu; Zhang, Keyun

doi:10.1111/cwe.12270

Cited by 27 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…Third, we evaluate the interplay between the national concentration-dispersion pattern and the monocentric-polycentric internal spatial structure of urban agglomerations, expecting to find differences in the spatial adjustment processes of economic activities both across cities and between the urban 'core' and the suburbs of a city (e.g., Bertinelli and Black, 2004;Li and Liu, 2018;Shen et al, 2019). Finally, we analyse population threshold values to evaluate whether an 'optimal' city size exists for the emergence and interplay of agglomeration economies and diseconomies (e.g., Frick and Rodríguez-Pose, 2018b).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does urban concentration matter for changes in country economic performance?

Ganau

Rodríguez‐Pose

2021

Urban Studies

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This paper uses a novel, globally harmonised city-level data set – with cities defined at the Functional Urban Area (FUA) level – to revisit the link between urban concentration and country-level economic dynamics. The empirical analysis, involving 108 low- and high-income countries, examines how differences in urban concentration impinge on changes in employment, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita and labour productivity at country level over the period 2000–2016. The results indicate that urban concentration reduces employment growth but increases GDP per capita and labour productivity growth. The returns of urban concentration are higher for high- than for low-income countries and are mainly driven by the ‘core’ of FUAs, rather than by suburban areas.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The HHI has, however, the advantage of considering the entire population of cities rather than only the largest one. Furthermore, with respect to density measures, the HHI accounts for the spatial distribution of population among urban areas (Shen et al, 2019).…”

Section: Acknowledgementsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does urban concentration matter for changes in country economic performance?

Ganau

Rodríguez‐Pose

2021

Urban Studies

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“…Despite negative externalities associated with economies of scale, its seems that "bigger is better" to a certain point if it has to do with increasing economics outputs in the short term, even in Mexico (Ahrend et al, 2014, p. 8;Kim, Yoonhee & Zangerling, Bontje, 2016, p. 17). A recent Asian work found also that size increase productivity in Chinese cities, meaning they still have room for urban growth, but highlight the specific threshold (the famous inverted "U" shape) where productivity promoted by population concentration begins to decline, marking the moment where government should redistribute population in order to avoid diseconomies of scale (Chen & Zhou, 2017;Shen, Chen, Yang, & Zhang, 2019 Regardless of this, other recent studies (McCann & Acs, 2011) challenge the "bigger is better" statement, by saying that most productive cities in the world are the ones who have a population under 3 million inhabitants, followed then by cities up to 7 million, and thus, suggesting mid-sized cities are more productive. Other studies advise that the size-productivity relationship is highly context dependent (Frick & Rodríguez-Pose, 2018).…”

Section: What We Know So Far About Urban Form (Spatial Structure) Andmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Form and Productivity in México 1995-2015

Montejano¹,

Caudillo²,

Monkkonen³

et al. 2020

EJSD

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Worldwide, urban policies are encouraging more compact development in cities arguing environmental sustainability and higher economic productivity. However, there is limited evidence for the relationship between urban form and economic productivity outside high-income countries. While we know that workers in larger cities are more productive, existing empirical evidence on the relationship between compactness and productivity is only from high-income countries, with a productive service sector. Given that the economic base of many cities in Mexico consists of land-intensive manufacturing activities, policies promoting urban compactness have potential negative impacts on economic growth by restraining expansion. In this paper we explore the relationship in time between urban form/spatial structure and economic productivity in Mexico, by testing the hypothesis that growing in a compact way is positively associated with labor productivity. That hypothesis is not completely rejected because several measures of urban form are positively correlated with higher levels of productivity, and other measures are negatively correlated. As the principal findings are counterintuitive, they raise questions about what is the accepted knowledge of urban growth. Keywords: Urban Form; urban structure; productivity; manufacturing; México.

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“…At the same time, the costs of city operation in providing public services will increase as well (Henderson, 1974; Au and Henderson, 2006). Both under-concentration and over-concentration can restrict economic growth (Davis and Henderson, 2003; Shen et al , 2019). The hukou system not only affects the city population agglomeration but also influence the costs of the city.…”

Section: Analytical Framework and Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

China’shukousystem and city economic growth: from the aspect of rural–urban migration

Zhang

Chen

Ding

et al. 2019

CAER

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the economic impacts of China’s hukou system and propose the possible direction for future reform. Design/methodology/approach The study develops a framework to incorporate the hukou system into the economic growth model. Using prefecture city-level panel data covering 241 cities over the period 2004–2016 and applying the fixed effects and instrumental variable regression techniques, the authors investigated empirically the impacts of the hukou system on city economic growth. Findings The study provides three main findings. First, the city sector conditionally benefits from labour mobility deregulation that allows migrants to work in cities. Second, the hukou system has different impacts on economic growth among cities with different sizes and administrative levels. Third, to offset the costs of providing exclusive public services to the migrants, the big or high-administrative-level cities can use their high-valued hukou to attract the high-skilled migrants, but the small- or low-administrative-level cities do not have this advantage. Practical implications This study suggests that the key for further hukou system reform is how to deal with the hukou–welfare binding relationship. Originality/value The authors developed a theoretical framework and conducted an empirical analysis on the direct relationship between the hukou system and economic growth to reveal the mechanism of how does the hukou system influence the city economic growth and answer the question of why is the hukou system reform so hard in China. The framework also sheds some lights on explaining the success and failure of the hukou system reforms in the past 40 years.

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City Size, Population Concentration and Productivity: Evidence from China

Cited by 27 publications

References 43 publications

Does urban concentration matter for changes in country economic performance?

Does urban concentration matter for changes in country economic performance?

Urban Form and Productivity in México 1995-2015

China’shukousystem and city economic growth: from the aspect of rural–urban migration

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