| After experiencing a long period of rapid economic growth,the phased characteristics of China’s economic development have undergone profound changes.Currently,China’s population aging is becoming increasingly serious,and the uncertainty of the international economic environment is increasing.The source of productivity that high-quality development relies on is undoubtedly the focus of attention from all sectors of society.As a major country in transition,in addition to technological progress,the improvement of production factor allocation efficiency at the micro level also plays an important role in promoting the sustained growth of China’s economy.Cities are the places where micro laborers live,work,and engage in enterprise production and operation activities.Therefore,analyzing the efficiency of labor allocation between cities is of great significance.Due to the existence of agglomeration economic effects,large cities have higher productivity.The sustained growth of China’s economy in the future requires further leveraging the agglomeration economic effect of cities in the process of urbanization,in order to drive economic development and improve residents’ living standards.To analyze urban agglomeration economy,it is first necessary to define urbanization areas in terms of spatial categories and measure urban agglomeration economy reasonably.Currently,most empirical studies in China focus on the analysis of urban administrative regions,using the scale of urban permanent population and average population density to reflect the agglomeration economy of cities.On the one hand,the urban space delineated by the administrative area of the city is difficult to reflect the actual situation of urban development,and is not suitable as a spatial range for measuring the development status of urbanization in China,which is in the stage of rapid urbanization.On the other hand,using population size and population density as measures of urban agglomeration economy has certain drawbacks:cities with the same population size and population density may have completely different spatial development patterns and very different levels of agglomeration economy internally.The first issue studied in this article is to scientifically and reasonably measure the economic level of urban agglomeration based on the essential characteristics of population agglomeration in the process of urbanization,relying on rich geographic information data and defining urbanization regions.From the existing research on the economic effects of urban agglomeration,spatial geographical factors and formal institutional factors are the focus of attention.However,in the long run,with the continuous weakening of institutional and policy barriers,the impact of informal institutions characterized by culture on market integration and economic efficiency will become increasingly prominent.So,how to measure the culture of a region?The general consensus in domestic literature on language economics is that dialects are the most prominent feature of regional culture and an effective carrier of regional culture.The second issue studied in this article is to use dialect diversity as a proxy variable for urban culture,and to study how urban dialect culture affects the economic effects of urban agglomeration.Specifically,taking the wage income of the floating population as the starting point,based on the extended Mincer wage equation,this study investigates how the diversity of urban dialects affects the wage income of workers and how it affects the wage premium effect of agglomeration economies.The optimal allocation of production factors in space is one of the important ways to improve economic efficiency,and the spatial migration behavior of workers is a specific form of spatial resource allocation.A typical fact of population spatial migration in China is that labor tends to flow within regions with similar dialects and cultures.However,the"cultural orientation" model of labor mobility may not be consistent with the "income maximization" model under the market mechanism,which may affect the flow and allocation of labor to maximize marginal revenue.The third question studied in this article is:What does cross dialect migration bring to migrant workers?Therefore,this article constructs dialect distance indicators based on the current district and hometown of workers,empirically analyzes the impact effect of dialect distance,and conducts empirical tests on the potential mechanism of action.In addition,this article provides a reasonable explanation for the paradox of "cross dialect mobility with higher wage income,labor tends to flow in areas with similar dialect cultures" from the perspective of social integration.In terms of research methods,based on the theories of language economics and agglomeration economics,a combination of geographic data analysis and econometric empirical analysis methods was used.The main research contents and conclusions are as follows:Firstly,based on the urbanization area defined by impermeable surface data and LandScan population distribution grid data,and drawing on the concept of "economic density" proposed by Henderson et al.,the indicators characterizing urban agglomeration economy were calculated at the urban level:personal population density(PPD)and RPA(derived from the surnames of Roca and Puga).It provides a useful supplement for the research of urban economics in the measurement of agglomeration economic indicators.Secondly,how does the diversity of urban dialects affect the wage premium of urban agglomeration economy.Based on urban economics and linguistic economics,this paper combs the existing research and puts forward research hypotheses,empirically analyzes the impact of urban agglomeration economy on workers’ wage income,and further analyzes how dialect diversity affects workers’ wages and how it affects the wage premium of agglomeration economy.The research finds that,firstly,there is a significant wage premium in the agglomeration economy,while the diversity of urban dialects has a significant adverse impact on workers’ wages,while hindering the promotion of the agglomeration economy on the actual wage level of workers.Secondly,the mechanism analysis results indicate that learning mechanisms,matching mechanisms,and labor employment protection are important reasons for the wage premium in agglomeration economies.The diversity of dialects has a negative impact on employment protection,while hindering learning and matching mechanisms.Thirdly,the analysis of the impact effect of dialect distance.The 2017 China Migrants Dynamic Survey(CMDS)data provided information on the hometown(county)and current location(county)of the mobile population,which enables this article to construct detailed dialect distance indicators.Furthermore,the interaction term between dialect distance and economic density is introduced into the extended Mincer wage equation to study the impact of dialect distance on the wage income of migrant workers,as well as the differences in the benefits of agglomeration economy for migrant workers with different dialect distances.Conduct empirical tests on the potential mechanism of action.Specifically,use the parameter estimation method based on distribution functions proposed by Combes et al.to test whether there is a self-selection effect,and use regression analysis to test the learning mechanism and matching mechanism.Research has found that dialect distance has a significant positive impact on the wage income of migrant workers and enhances the wage premium of agglomeration economies.Mechanism analysis shows that cross dialect transfer is a self-selection behavior of more capable workers,and in addition,learning and matching mechanisms also play a role.Considering the current trend of workers towards mobility between regions with similar cultures and languages,an important inference in this article is that dialect distance is not conducive to the integration of migrant populations into their cities,hindering the flow and allocation of labor factors to maximize benefits,and causing a mismatch in labor factors.Based on the research conclusions of this article,the following policy implications are drawn:firstly,China’s urbanization process should adhere to a relatively compact internal spatial structure model and strive to achieve reasonable and efficient urban land use.Secondly,increase the promotion of Mandarin to reduce communication barriers among residents;Strengthen basic education,promote the equalization of public education resources among regions,and strive to improve the average education level of cities with high dialect diversity,reducing illiteracy rates;Further improve the labor market protection system,in order to better play the role of agglomeration economy in increasing workers’wage income.Thirdly,we should break the shackles of traditional administrative monopolies on resource allocation,further relax the constraints on the free flow of labor,promote the cross-cultural regional flow of labor,and optimize the nationwide allocation of labor resources.Based on existing literature,this article may have some marginal innovations in the following aspects:Firstly,the measurement of indicators characterizing urban agglomeration economy is more reasonable and accurate.In terms of urban spatial scope,urban administrative region is not suitable as a regional range for measuring urban agglomeration economy indicators.This paper extracts the urbanization regions of cities at prefecture level and above in China from the global urbanization boundary drawn by artificial impervious surface data as the regional scope of urban agglomeration economic indicators.In terms of indicator selection,urban permanent population and average population density are the most common measurement indicators.However,due to differences in urban spatial development models,two cities with the same population density and size may have very different levels of economic activity agglomeration within the city.This article refers to the concept of"economic density" proposed by Henderson et al.and measures the indicators that characterize urban agglomeration economy at the urban level.Economic density covers the average population density of a city and the differential distribution of population in different regions within the city,thus overcoming the shortcomings of common indicators.After reviewing relevant domestic literature,especially the latest literature on CNKI,this paper measures the indicator RPA that characterizes urban agglomeration economy based on defining the urbanization regions of all cities at or above the prefecture level in mainland China for the first time.Compared to previous literature,this study on the level of urban agglomeration economy has improved to some extent in terms of spatial scope definition and indicator calculation,which is a beneficial supplement to existing research.Secondly,the research perspective is relatively novel.This article analyzes the agglomeration economic effect from the perspective of dialect culture.Existing research mostly analyzes the economic effects of urban agglomeration from the perspectives of spatial geography and formal institutional factors,neglecting the influence of culture as an informal institution.With the improvement of infrastructure and the continuous weakening of policy barriers,the impact of informal institutions characterized by culture on market integration and economic efficiency will become increasingly prominent.This article introduces the non-institutional factor of culture into the study of urban agglomeration economy.Based on the theory of agglomeration economy and cultural perspectives,it examines the impact of urban scale,dialect diversity,and their interaction effects on workers’ wage income within a unified framework.This supplements the literature foundation on urban scale wage premiums and provides some reference for a better understanding of the role of informal institutions in the Chinese environment.Thirdly,research methods are comprehensive and reflect interdisciplinary approaches.The measurement of urban agglomeration economy is the fundamental work of this article.In terms of data,this article extensively applies to geographic information data and uses ArcGIS software to process satellite remote sensing data.In order to address the self-selection problem of cross dialect labor mobility,this paper uses statistical analysis software SAS for parameter estimation based on distribution functions.This fully reflects the interdisciplinary characteristics of this article. |
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