| Influenced by the international economic downtrend since the internationalfinancial crisis, China’s export-oriented economic growth rate has slowed down.Expanding domestic demand has become a long-term development orientation of thenational economy. To actively and steadily promote urbanization and coordinateregional economic development has become a basic approach and power source toexpand domestic demand and accelerate the transformation of economic developmentmode. However, China, during the process of urbanization and economic development,still faces serious problems like unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainabledevelopment. The key to solve these problems is to correctly identify the spatialmechanism among different regions and cities in China, reasonably arrange the layoutof economic activities according to urban economic spatial development potential,and coordinate the development of key areas with that of other regions so as toachieve the spatial cooperative development and realize the win-win situation ofurbanization and urban economic development. However, so far only a few or even noin-depth researches explore the economic linkage among cities and its effective mode,the theoretical connotation and measure methods of urban economic development, andthe spatial sources of urban manufacturing agglomeration and economic development.This article tries to make up for these deficiencies.This paper regards agglomeration economies and spillover effects–spatialdistribution of factor and market–urban economic development–regional economicintegration as the main line to build a spatial analysis framework for urban andregional economic development based on the theory of location, traditionalcomparative advantage, agglomeration economy and new economic geography fromthe comprehensive view of factor supply and market demand. It makes an in-depthanalysis of the data of all prefecture-or-higher-level cities of China, whichdemonstrates the distribution trends of factor supply, market demand and economicactivities among different cities and their impact on the urban economic efficiencyand economic growth.Firstly, this paper has analyzed the reasonable market size and agglomerationdensity under the optimum carrying capacity of the city from a comprehensive perspective of factor supply and market demand within the city based on the theory oflocation and agglomeration economies. The results show that there exists an invertedU-shaped relationship between urban labor productivity and employmentagglomeration density and market size. The employment density of most cities inChina is too large, and agglomeration diseconomies have appeared in such cities. Theemployment density of eastern and central part is too large, while the employmentdensity of western areas is still low. Market size has significant positive effects onurban labor productivity in each area. In particular, there exists an inverted U-shapedrelationship between market size represented by urban radius and labor productivityin each region, while the inverted U-shaped relationship between market sizerepresented by retail sales of social consumer goods only exists in the eastern andcentral city.Sencondly, this paper has expanded the supply and demand factors influencingurban economic development from the city itself to larger spaces by including othercities. It constructs the urban supply-demand potential indexes based on the spatialdistribution of factor supply and market demand and analyzes and evaluates thereasonable economic scale of cities across regions and different grade cities. Thestudy finds that the supply-demand potentials substantially differ across regions, andthe cities with higher potentials are contiguously distributed; the supply-demandpotentials gradually extent from megacities and city groups to cities along majortraffic corridors and further to cities in more extensive areas; the spatial pattern ofChina’s urban system is significantly correlated to the supply-demand potentials. Theanalysis also reveals that agglomeration diseconomies have appeared in megacitieswhile unrealized potentials exist in many smaller cities.Thirdly, this paper has demonstrated the effects of spatial supply and demandfactors on manufacturing location, spatial agglomeration, and urban economic growthfrom different aspects, and obtained the theoretical and econometric basis for theformation mechanism of urban economic development potential.(1) We make acomparative analysis on the effects of traditional comparative advantages and varioustypes of spatial externalities on the distribution of manufacturing location. The resultsshow that traditional comparative advantage is still an important factor that affectsmanufacturing location. There exists significant spatial correlation of factor supplyand market demand among cities, which becomes the major source of manufacturingagglomeration over the traditional comparative. The effects of traditional comparativeadvantage and spatial externalities on manufacturing agglomeration are in a descending order from west to east and from east to west respectively.(2) We make adeep study on the spatial agglomeration mechanism of manufacturing. We find thatthe spatial factor supply and market demand have significant positive effect on spatialagglomeration of manufacturing. The spatial externalities of supply and demandconstitute the spatial mechanism of manufacturing agglomeration. There existscomplementary relationship between domestic and foreign market on the role ofmanufacturing agglomeration.(3) We make a further study on the effects of the factorsupply proximity and market potential on urban economies based on a synthesizedframework of Marshall’s agglomeration economies and the new economic geography.The results show that expenditure in R&D, density of science and technical talent,producer services, and domestic and international market potentials promoted urbaneconomic growth. Factor agglomeration externalities and market potentials of owncity and of other cities had very different effects in the eastern, central, and westernregions. Among them, the eastern cities benefited significantly from economicintegration and from the needs of the national market, the western cities were not yetout of the self-reliance in economic growth, and the central city benefited from factoragglomeration of the city itself and other cities and demands of domestic andinternational market.Finally, this paper puts forward policy recommendations in accordance with thelogic of “from the development of own city to interactive development among cities”.The policy recommendations of interactive development among cities are proposedfrom national, inter-regional, and intra-regional levels respectively, which providessupport for policies like promoting urbanization, interval industrial transfer andcoordinated regional economic development.The contribution of this paper mainly lies in the following aspects: Firstly, thispaper uses economic agglomeration as the key link to integrate the factors of supplyand demand influencing the urban economic development into the same analyticalframework, and proposes the spatial linkage mechanism of regional development, andthen provides a new conceptual framework for actively and steadily promotingurbanization and regional economic coordinated development. Secondly, this paperhas integrated the complementary theories of location theory, the traditionalcomparative advantage, agglomeration economy, new economic geography theoryunder the supply-demand framework of agglomeration, and systematically andcomprehensively analyses the specific issues of the urbanization and regionaleconomic coordinated development. Thirdly, this study has combined the agglomeration economy theory and new economic geography theory with potentialmodel, so as to build spatial external indicators of factor supply and market demandso that the pure empirical and formulary potential model are endowed with a cleartheoretical connotation. Fourthly, the samples are very abundant in each chapter,which contain284cities’ panel data from2003to2010. Therefore, the analysis resultsare quite reliable and have a widespread practical significance. |
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