Spatial interactions among U.S. cities: 1900–1990

We test implications of economic geography by exploring spatial interactions among U.S. cities. We use a data set consisting of 1900–1990 metro area populations, and spatial measures including distance from the nearest larger city in a higher-tier, adjacency, and location within U.S. regions. We also date cities from their time of settlement. We find that among cities which enter the system, larger cities are more likely to locate near other cities. Moreover, older cities are more likely to have neighbors. Distance from the nearest higher-tier city is not always a significant determinant of size and growth. We find no evidence of persistent non-linear effects on urban growth of either size or distance, although distance is important for city size for some years.     

中国城市规模分布实证研究

选择1994-2004年中国城市规模位于前200住的地级及地级以上城市,分剐采用人口和建成区面积来表征城市规模,借助于分形理论进行研究发现,无论是从人口规模还是从用地规模来看,中国城市规模的分布符合"位序一规模"法则;外来人口的增加和2000年之后城市规模的加速增长使城市发展表现出向高位次城市集聚的倾向;但由于中国城市体系规模结构比较成熟,其基本特征并没有因时间、外来人口和城市规模的变化而改变;高位次城市仍有较大的发展空间.认为如何更好地识别城市的实际规模,促进城市的理性增长和城市规模结构的健康优化,是中国城市发展亟待解决的问题.     

The size distribution of cities: An examination of the Pareto law and primacy

This paper examines the Pareto and primacy measures of the size distribution of cities. The mean Pareto exponent for a sample of 44 countries is 1.136, somewhat greater than the exponent of one implied by the rank-size rule. We find that value of the Pareto exponent is quite sensitive to the definition of the city and the choice of city sample size. The significance of non-linear terms in variants of the Pareto distribution also indicate that the rank-size rule is only a first approximation to a complete characterization of the size distribution of cities within a country. The relatively low correlation between primacy and Pareto measures confirms the need for a variety of measures of city size distributions. This paper also suggests that large cities are growing faster than small cities in most of the countries in our sample. This is indicated by the positive coefficient on the first non-linear term introduced into the Pareto equation. Finally, variations in the Pareto exponent and measures of primacy are partly explained by economic, demographic, and geographic factors.     

我国城市规模两极分化的现状与原因

在城市化过程中,城市规模的分布与资源配置状况对我国经济能否平稳发展有至关重要的作用。运用城市成本—收益、位序—规模分布、网络城市等理论,通过分析我国不同规模城市的人口、经济总量、资源配置等数据,对我国城市规模两极分化的特征性事实做了概括总结,并从市场选择、政治制度、自然历史因素等三个方面分析了我国城市规模两极分化的原因,认为城市化的均衡发展对我国经济社会的平稳发展具有至关重要的作用,并据此提出引导教育、医疗等优质资源向中小城市流动,促进不同规模城市协调发展的对策。     

基于分形理论谈安徽沿江环湖城市群的建立

简要介绍了分形理论的原理,运用分形理论,借助于罗特卡公式分析安徽省城市体系规模分布的分形特征,发现安徽省城市体系规模分布符合位序—规模率,存在城市体系规模分布过于均衡及首位城市、大城市规模过小的问题。提出建立安徽省沿江环湖城市群规模体系的发展对策。     

中国城市等级体系问题的初步研究

城市等级结构问题的研究由来已久,但研究中通常用人口规模作为研究的基本材料,因而得出的结论不大符合实情。本文在前人工作的基础上,对克里斯塔勒的中心度计算公式略作修正,先找出不同的专业职能等级序列,再在专业职能等级序列的基础上加权求和,得出各省会城市和计划单列市在全国范围内的综合中心度,进而分析中国城市体系的等级结构。     

An indirect test of efficient city sizes

This paper develops a model which demonstrates necessary conditions for efficient distribution of labor across areas given the presence of agglomeration economies and congestion externalities. An indirect empirical test for efficient allocation is formulated based on a comparison of estimated agglomeration economies with the compensating variation in occupation-specific wages needed to attract workers to larger cities. The results of this test suggest that there are specific city size ranges where necessary conditions for efficient allocation of resources are not met, particularly for cities in the 1.5 to 2.5 million population range. Current claims that continued growth of the largest U. S. cities is inefficient are not confirmed by the empirical results.     

City size and urban labor productivity in China: New evidence from spatial city-level panel data analysis

The previous literature has generally found that most Chinese cities were undersized in the 1990s. However, little is known about how urban agglomeration in China has evolved since the country began to experience much faster urbanization and deep marketization after 2000. Based on panel data of 281 cities between 2000 and 2013, our spatial panel data regression results show that the scale impact of city size on urban productivity appears to have an inverted U shape, and its effect will grow when the cities’ industrial structure becomes more dominated by the service sector. There are also significant spatial interactions and spatial heterogeneity of urban agglomeration among Chinese cities. Furthermore, we compute the optimal size for each city and find that most Chinese cities are still undersized in recent years. Based on our findings, we argue that the Chinese government should focus on promoting sufficient growth of medium sized cities in its new urbanization strategy.     

The effects of social heterogeneity on travel patterns: A replication study

This paper examines differences between the U.S. and Australian urban landscape in terms of the relationship between urban structure and the effectiveness of public transportation. A replication study is undertaken that tests the validated hypothesis from a U.S. study that urban travel corridor social heterogeneity reduces patronage of public transportation because of resident concerns with social composition of passengers and effects on the travel privacy dimension. A causal model is identified for the city of Sydney that specifies enogenous and endogenous variables, as per the U.S. study, which affect bus and rail use. Results do not lead to the acceptance of the hypothesized relationship. The presence of social heterogeneity in Sydney travel corridors does not deter residents within the study corridors from using the bus or train for the journey to work, nor do they appear to affect longer term decisions on car ownership. Bus patronage was shown to be dependent on social heterogeneity factors while rail use was associated with car owning households. These results highlight differences in urban spatial structure and travel patterns between Sydney and cities in the U.S. study, and suggest differential effects of changes in urban spatial structure and policy responses.     

The size distribution of Chinese cities

This paper uses urban data to investigate two important issues regarding city sizes in China, the relative growth of cities and the nature of the city size distribution. The manner in which cities of different sizes grow relative to each other is examined and, contrary to the common empirical finding that the relative size and rank of cities remains stable over time, it is found that the Economic Reforms and the One Child Policy since 1979 have delivered significant structural change in the Chinese urban system. The city size distribution remains stable before the reforms but exhibits a convergent growth pattern in the post-reform period. The theoretical literature on city sizes highlights a link between log normal and Pareto distributions for city sizes prompting the employment of Pearson goodness-of-fit tests to examine directly which theoretical distribution provides the best approximation to the empirical city size distribution. Contrary to the evidence for other countries, a log normal rather than Pareto specification turns out to be the preferred distribution.     

How efficiently do U.S. cities manage roadway congestion?

We estimate efficiency and TFP growth for two measures of congestion and two measures of the monetary value of congestion for the largest 88 contiguous cities in the U.S. over the period 1982–2007. Using stochastic frontier analysis we find that the efficiency scores for congestion and the associated ranking of cities is sensitive to the measure of congestion. In contrast, the efficiency scores and rankings are robust for the two measures of the monetary value of congestion. Most importantly, for the most valid measure of congestion and both measures of the monetary value of congestion, we find that average TFP growth over the study period is characterized by an upward trend. This is an encouraging sign even though in all three cases growth is only zero or slightly less than zero at the end of the study period. We therefore conclude that policies which have been used towards the end of the study period such as providing incentives to carpool and encouraging employers to offer flexi-time and telecommuting arrangements appear to have been effective and should be implemented more widely.     

Dynamics in a Mature Industry: Entry,Exit, and Growth of Big‐Box Grocery Retailers

This paper measures market dynamics within the U.S. grocery industry (defined as supermarket, supercenter, and club retailers). We find that despite being a mature industry, the grocery industry is remarkably dynamic. Each year retailers open or close roughly 7% of U.S. stores. We also find significant changes in the size of firms’ operations within markets over time. These changes in relative size are largely the result of expansion or contraction by incumbents rather than the result of firm entry or exit. In fact, entry and exit are quite rare, except by small firms. Moreover, only in small markets do new entrants gain substantial market share.     

Does going public in the U.S. facilitate corporate innovation of foreign firms?

We examine how going public in the U.S. IPO market influences corporate innovation. Using 185 foreign and 2948 U.S. domestic firms going public in the U.S. over the 1980–2006 period, we find that while exhibiting similar innovativeness in the pre-IPO period, non-U.S. firms tend to generate more innovation than U.S. domestic firms after going public. The findings are robust to adopting subsample tests, various measures of changes in innovation around the year of the IPO, and accounting for truncation problems and potential endogeneity concerns. Further tests show that changes in innovation around the year of the IPO tend to be less prominent for non-U.S. firms that domiciled in countries with more developed equity market and higher level of economic freedom. Our study provides insights into the real effect of going public in the U.S. IPO market on innovative activities.     

A Small Entrepreneurial City in Action: Policy Mobility,Urban Entrepreneurialism,and Politics of Scale in Jiyuan,China

This research details the mundane practices of policy mobility and entrepreneurial endeavour in Jiyuan in relation to the city's changing administrative position, and is one of the first attempts at understanding how entrepreneurial policies are mobilized, mutated and diffused in a small inland Chinese city. We interpret Jiyuan's evolving development strategies and trajectory through two interrelated conceptual lenses—policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism—bridged by an analysis of the politics of scale. Over the past three decades, governance strategies in Jiyuan have evolved from policy imitation, during the germination of urban entrepreneurialism, to policy mutation and diffusion, under the amplification of entrepreneurialism, as the city has moved up the administrative levels and urban hierarchy. Policy mobility and urban entrepreneurialism in Jiyuan, involving a multi‐scalar process, are being shaped by the interactions between the city, the region, the central state and global capital under the confluence of globalization and marketization. The ‘successful’ story of a small entrepreneurial city tells a new tale that can inform wider contexts by painting a fuller portrait of the evolution of an entrepreneurial city across different scales and time and bringing cities hitherto ‘off the map’ back into the picture of urban entrepreneurialism against the backdrop of globalization.     

Metropolitan suburbanization and central city problems

This paper is an empirical study of effects of central city problems on population and employment suburbanization. It is widely believed that high crime, high taxes, and large minority groups in central cities are important causes of rapid suburbanization of U.S. metropolitan areas. A large set of density functions is estimated for population and employment in U.S. metropolitan areas in 1960 and 1970. Thus, relative central city and suburban measures of crime, taxes, etc., are used in an interactive model to explain population and employment suburbanization. It is found that only racial minorities have an effect on suburbanization.     

长江三角洲城市群城市规模分布与经济规模分布的比较研究

本文建立与城市规模、城市首位度和城市规模基尼系数相应的经济规模、经济首位度和经济规模基尼系数指标,运用2007-2012年的统计数据测算各指标值,对长江三角洲城市群城市规模分布与经济规模分布进行分析比较.得出两大结论：第一,目前长江三角洲城市群城市规模与经济规模的增长率都呈下降趋势,但城市群内出现有若干经济规模发展快于城市规模发展的高效率城市,也有若干经济规模发展慢于城市规模发展的低效率城市,高、低效率城市正在改变城市群原来的人口与经济规模的结构.第二,长江三角洲城市群内人口与经济规模高度集中,尤其是最大城市上海市人口集中度严重.据此,笔者提出了长江三角洲城市群进一步城镇化的建议：突破行政区域的限制,建立上海都市圈.     

Relative Performance of U.S. and Japanese Electricity Distribution: An Application of Stochastic Frontier Analysis

This paper estimates and compares the technical efficiency of the U.S. and Japanese electric utilities during the period 1982–1997 using a stochastic frontier analysis. Our focus is on electricity distribution services of major investor-owned utilities. We employ translog input distance functions to represent the technology of electricity distribution. Empirical results show that after controlling for environmental variables, on average, the Japanese electric utilities are more efficient. It is shown, however, that some U.S. utilities are as efficient as the most efficient Japanese utilities, indicating that the estimated frontier is not necessarily dominated by Japanese utilities.An erratum to this article can be found at     

城市规模与居民幸福感的关系

利用2002年中国家庭收入调查数据,实证检验了城市规模与居民主观幸福度的关系。结果显示,二者存在显著的倒U形关系,随着城市规模的扩大,居民主观幸福感先增加,当城市规模达到一定程度,居民主观幸福感将降低。     

Performance measure properties and efficacy of incentive contracts: perceptions of U. S. employees

This paper examines how employees perceive the impact of performance measure properties (noise and distortion) on the efficacy of incentive contracts in the United States. It surveys 98 employees at middle and lower levels of U. S. firms across different industries. The survey results show that employees perceive noise and distortion in performance measures to significantly influence the overall efficacy of incentive plans. Specifically, employees perceive that incentive plans with less noisy or distorted measures attract better employees to their firms. However, employees do not perceive lower noise or distortion in performance measures to motivate more effort in their work after controlling for the selection effect of incentive plans. These results illustrate the importance of performance measure properties in the U. S. incentive contracts and provide evidence regarding cross-national differences in management practices.     

Measuring wage effects of plant size

There are large plant size–wage effects in the Nordic countries after taking into account individual and job characteristics as well as systematical sorting of the workers into various plant-sizes. The plant size–wage elasticities we obtain are, in contrast to other dimensions of the wage distribution, comparable to the plant-size effects in other countries such as the U.S. with completely different institutions of wage setting. We also investigate the consequence of measurement error associated with the common practice of using midpoints of plant-size classes to estimate the plant size–wage elasticity. Our results indicate that using size–class midpoints yields essentially the same results as using exact measures of plant size.