专业化产业集聚、空间成本与区域工业化

本文扩展了贸易成本的范围,认为贸易成本不仅包括产品运输成本,而且也包括要素流动成本,并引入前后向产业联系,认为中间产品使用及种类的增加所创造的成本和需求联系效应有利于提高最终产品的生产效率。在此基础上文章发展了可解的中心-外围模型,并探讨了在各种条件下相应的经济学含义,认为在推动我国区域经济一体化的进程中,对落后地区的技术支持必不可少,重视区域间产业发展的互动,否则,我国区域经济一体化进程难以有效推进。     

区域基质及城市规划中的区域思维

城市与区域是空间作用永恒的主体。文章在描述城市与区域交互作用时引入了区域基质的概念,强调区域在区域内各节点空间或其外围空间发展中所起到的基础支撑作用。城市是区域的产儿,在其与区域基质交互作用的过程中,视其作用关系可分为城市区域系统、区域城市系统、城市—区域系统三种形式。城市存在于区域之中,一开始就具有区域性,我们需要从区域角度来研究城市,用区域思维来思考城市发展,这也就决定了城市规划的区域思维。当前,这种区域思维在规划中主要通过区域战略研究、区域城镇体系规划、城市群规划、都市圈规划等形式体现出来。     

西方国家关于城市通勤的研究回顾与展望

城市通勤是西方地理学、规划学和社会学等学科的重要研究内容.文章从居住与就业的空间关系角度对西方国家的城市通勤相关研究进行了回顾,涉及到城市通勤的理论与模型、通勤行为的影响因素、过剩通勤和空间失衡等,在简单回顾国内相关研究的基础上,最后对国内相关研究提出展望,认为应该注重社会调查,加强个体层面的研究,关注从居住-就业的空间关系研究城市通勤量大规模增加的原因,并重视研究居住-就业的空间失衡所造成的社会空间后果,为社会福利政策寻求更好的解决措施.     

地方专业化、技术进步和产业升级:来自长三角的证据

以长三角制造业为对象,利用长三角区域内16个城市1998-2003年的相关数据进行的分析和计算表明:地方专业化能促进产业从劳动密集型向资本密集型升级,推动行业的技术进步;地方专业化行业的技术进步增长率和技术对经济的贡献率都明显高于非地方专业化行业,地方专业化有弱化垄断而强化竞争的倾向。     

FIRING COSTS AND BUSINESS CYCLE FLUCTUATIONS*

This article considers a real business cycle model with establishment level dynamics and uses it to analyze the effects of firing taxes. It finds that firing taxes can have significant consequences on business cycle fluctuations, that the largest effects are on aggregate employment, and that even relatively small firing taxes have substantial effects. A significant contribution of the article is computational: It describes how to use standard linear‐quadratic methods to solve for a stochastic equilibrium of an (S,s) economy with tax distortions.     

HOME MARKET EFFECT AND TRADE COSTS*

Concerning industrial location, the home market effect (HME) predicts that a large country is a net exporter of industrial goods. Recent literature shows that high transport costs in the traditional sector may obscure the HME in an early model of two sectors à la Helpman and Krugman. This paper presents an alternative model that displays the relationship between the HME and arbitrary transport costs while allowing for the derivation of analytical results by simple algebra. Our results show that the transport costs in the traditional sector do not obscure the HME but constitute a dispersion force that decreases the impact of the HME.     

FIXED COSTS,THE BALANCED BUDGET MULTIPLIER AND WELFARE*

In a two‐sector model, where one of the sectors is monopolistically competitive and subject to increasing returns to scale but without love for variety, we analyse the effects of a balanced budget fiscal expansion. Such an expansion could increase the welfare of the representative individual, if elasticities of substitution in production and consumption are low. A reorganization of production takes place—increasing returns enabling a rise in real income.     

DIMENSIONS,TRANSACTIONS COSTS AND COALITIONS IN LEGISLATIVE VOTING*

Dimensional studies of Congressional voting have found a single dominant “ideological” dimension, while regression estimates find that constituency variables and party are dominant. Koford (1989b) recalibrated the dimensional studies, and found that several dimensions are important. This study reviews those findings, and then considers additional reasons why dimensional studies might understate the number of dimensions. It then examines the regression estimates for biases that overstate the number of dimensions. Overall, fewer dimensions are found than seem consistent with the wide variety of constituents' preferences on issues. A model is developed in which the transactions costs of building coalitions reduces the number of dimensions visible on roll-call votes below the underlying dimensionality of preferences in the issue space. When legislative parties build internal coalitions to pass and defeat bills, voting on randomly drawn bills has a single party-oriented dimension. Natural ideological dimensions are reinforced when parties write bills and logroll along natural lines of cohesion. Numerical examples suggest that these effects could be important, and suggest lines for empirical investigation of the underlying issue space.     

GROWTH AREAS,GROWTH CENTRES AND REGIONAL CONVERSION*

Five arguments in favour of a growth area strategy have been analysed and though all of them lack empirical substance, they have certain merits on a priori grounds. Thus any policy which contributes, on the long-run, to a more rapid concentration of a region's population into relatively large urban areas, is likely to create the conditions for servicing net and replacement demand for social/economic overhead capital at a low per capita cost. Moreover for a given subsidy cost, discriminatory investment in the dense, complex, urbanised areas of a region may maximise the flow of income to regional earners in the short-run: attract the maximum flow of exogenous enterprise and capital; and give the best chance of creating a new export base which reduces the regional balance-of-payments deficit and provides sufficient job-opportunities to restrain the flow out of the region of the economically active. In addition, the quality and content of shortterm regional planning may be improved if the mix and scheduling of public investment over time is given a rigorous spatial dimension. Thus, on all of these counts, there are convincing reasons for encouraging an especially rapid development of the relative large, dense interrelated urban areas and by contrast good reasons for a relative neglect of the small hinterland areas.     

PUBLIC FINANCE AND REGIONAL ACCOUNTS*

This paper discusses the problems that arise in the regional allocation of public sector accounts. These problems arise mainly in connection with the regional allocation of government expenditures on a governing rather than a procurement basis, and in the derivation of a meaningful surplus or deficit. The latter in turn requires an examination of the real geographic incidence of government revenues—to avoid, for instance, the assignment of the whole tobacco tax to Virginia and North Carolina. The use of a procurement basis for government product and the real geographic distribution of direct tax incidence for government revenue would produce a more complete and meaningful regional surplus or deficit measure, and gross regional products will not be as subject to spurious inter-regional variation.     

INCOME,CONSUMPTION AND SAVING IN URBAN AND RURAL INDIA*

The main purpose of the study is to determine the savings potential of urban and rural households in India and in the process determine the possible savings and consumption functions separately for urban and rural areas. Four different possible functions have been used for determining the savings behaviour of the households both at the aggregate level and at the per capita level. The rural households, according to the results, have an extremely low rate of saving with income elasticity of saving of less than unity. For the urban households on the other hand, the income elasticity of saving is high enough to suggest the possibilities of considerably high savings potential. To understand the consumption behaviour of these households, the long-run and the short-run marginal propensities to consume and the marginal propensities to consume out of‘permanent’ or ‘normal’ income and ‘transitory’ income have been worked out. For the urban sector none of these give encouraging enough results and the analysis has been extended to examine whether other factors like prices and household assets are of any significance. Whereas for the rural sector, Milton Friedman's theory of ‘permanent’ or ‘normal’ income is somewhat substantiated, other factors like ‘transitory’ income, prices and assets appear to inthence urban consumption behaviour though no single one of them substantially enough. A negligible effect of ‘permanent’ income on urban consumption behaviour is, on the other hand, very clearly suggested by the results. Household consumption and savings have next been projected using the above results to determine the possible levels for the next three years. The results suggest that the rate of domestic savings likely to be achieved by the end of the Third Five Year Plan (1965–66) falls short of the targets laid down.     

FIRM FRAGMENTATION AND URBAN PATTERNS*

We document several empirical regularities regarding the evolution of urban structure in the largest U.S. metropolitan areas over the period 1980–90. These regularities relate to changes in resident population, employment, occupations, as well as the number and size of establishments in different sections of the metropolitan area. We then propose a theory of urban structure that emphasizes the location and internal structure decisions of firms. In particular, firms can decide to locate their headquarters and operation plants in different regions of the city. Given that cities experienced positive population growth throughout the 1980s, we show that firm fragmentation produces the diverse set of facts documented in the article.     

MARKET TRANSACTION COSTS IN INDUSTRIALIZATION AND DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION*

Abstract. This paper presents a unified theory of growth involving human capital accumulation, labour specialization, market expansion and falling fertility rates. The model suggests that these processes, often analysed separately, are intimately linked. The accumulation of specialized human capital increases the gains to labour specialization, leading agents to increase their participation in markets and reduce time spent at home. This raises the opportunity cost of child raising, lowering fertility rates. The model suggests a central role for market transaction costs in determining the timing and rate of fertility declines linked to rising income.     

区域自主创新与城市经济可持续发展互动研究

"提高自主创新能力,建设创新型国家",是面对环境资源制约国家或城市发展的必然选择。在此背景下,经济建设是中心,技术创新成了生存和发展的手段。中心城市经济发展程度与自主创新活动之间存在紧密的联系,要构建一个城市不同层次的创新系统,完善自主创新的载体,使之与城市经济的可持续发展实现良性互动。