| Information and Communication Technology,as the representative technology in the 5th economic long wave,is revolutionizing the paradigm of economic growth.Since 1990s,ICT have witnessed fast development in China.Compared to other technologies,it is well known for complexity and flexibility.During the continuous upgrades,the price of ICT product and transport cost have dramatically dropped,and information product can be consumed independently via internet.Therefore,the technology diffusion should have distinct spatial characteristics.For adopters,the internet may impose great influence on their behavior.As consequence,compared to traditional society,the population distribution across China may see a different trend.These three aspects are the theme of this dissertation.Spatial economics is the analytic framework.On the basis of the heterogeneity of commodities and transport cost,the agglomeration of industries and population is caused by the increasing return in cities,and the Dixit-Stigliz model is used to depict this relationship.Internet can greatly change the value of those three variables,and there may see new equilibrium.According to the upgrades of technology,the time intervals are described as 3 stages,from 2G period to 4G.The decrease of ICT product price and transport cost optimizes the market efficiency which was negatively influenced by the large span of national territory and imbalanced development of economy across regions.With the further spatial diffusion in the remote and less developed areas in the western part,internet expands the scale of national consumption market and improves its efficiency.Among residents in periphery region,the incompletion of information is no longer a major obstacle for consumption,thanks to the sharing and matching effects internet provides.As a result,the payoff of migration changes,considering the variation of consumption utility in different regions,and a distinctive migration pattern is expected.This dissertation consists of six chapters:the first chapter is the introduction,including the background,significance,objectives,research review,research content and plans.The second chapter is the definition of relevant concepts and theories.It briefly introduces the impact of transport cost on the distribution of industrial centers,applying D-S model.Then the sharing and matching effects are illustrated as the cause of the increasing return in the central cities.By contrast,as the population continues to agglomerate,increasing land rent and migration cost play a role as counter-acting force to mitigate further agglomeration.The third chapter is,on the one hand,to summarize the general progress of internet technology,and to state the trend of such process.On the other hand,with the innovative spatial characteristics of internet,the sharing and matching effects are intensified in the regional center in the form of the combination between ICT product and physical commodities or service,while such effects also improve the cooperation between regions in the form of independent ICT product consumption.As consequence,internet not only increases the marginal increasing return for agglomeration,but also improves the cooperative efficiency between regions on the national scale.The forth chapter describes the transition of ICT technological centers and the spatial penetration effect in technology diffusion.In the mid of 1990s,China began to catch up with the technological frontier by the means of government active behavior.Around 2010,the gap had shrunk,and the dominant incentive had transited from government to market mechanism.While the technology upgraded from 2G to 4G,the diffusion center drifts from provincial economic centers to national technological centers.Although gravity model is applicable throughout the period,the impact of distance constantly attenuated.In addition,internet diffusion in the periphery began to catch up with the one in core region while the technology develops.Evidently,the income effect of ICT product is salient.Furthermore,the spatial distribution of population is illustrated since 1949.As for migration,the main reason was political before the reform and open.Then the economic factors gradually dominates the process,in the form of individual autonomous behavior,meanwhile the population structure is increasingly improved.The fifth chapter focuses on the impact of internet on spatial population distribution,providing empirical evidence.Spatial econometric analysis is applied to analyze the impact of internet to migration.The local impact and spatial externality is increasingly significant when internet is upgraded.Internet intensifies the intraregional population migration while mitigating the interregional one.As the technology upgrades,the effect of agglomeration is more and more significant,especially for the mega cites.In addition,difference in difference in difference(DDD)model is applied to analyze the upgrade of consumption structure of urban residents in periphery regions in 4G period.Compared to the residents in other regions,their upgrade in consumption structure is accelerated.Except for the substitution effect to accommodation expenditure,complementary effect to other commodities is observed.The last chapter is the conclusion.The full text of the study is summarized,and the implication of policy and the ideas of further study are presented.With the theoretical and empirical analysis,the conclusions of this research can be summarized as follow:Firstly,according to spatial economic theory,the decline of transport cost leads to transition to the single industrial center distribution from multicenter structure.The development of internet follows this path.When the transport cost drops due to the technological upgrades,the centre of technology diffusion changed from provincial economic centre to national industrial centres.Meanwhile,because of the characteristics of ICT,internet diffusion gradually ignores the constraint of geographical distance,and in the remote periphery region,a faster technology diffusion rate is observed.The diffusion is recognized as more spatially homogenized.The upgrades of internet also loosens the strong coupling relationship between the level of economic development and the level of technology adoption.Secondly,along with the development of technology,the price of information transmission has dropped to nearly zero.Due to the increasing diversity of internet applications,information flows can integrate commodities and services.The sharing and matching effects of internet can function in two ways:for areas in a region,internet can improve the efficiency of transactions by searching and pairing potential buyers and sellers instantly,and such improvement rise with population density.That is the reason for intraregional population agglomeration.On contrast,between distant regions,commodities,private services or even public facilities can be shared in the form of information.Referring this,part of migration is substituted.When the technology is upgraded to 4G,internet activates the regional migration agglomerating to the regional central cities,while mitigating inter-regional migration.This pattern helps regions optimize the alloction of human resource on the national scale.Finally,because of the economic gap between central region in the east and periphery region in the west,people in the periphery region didn't acquire sufficient disposable income and commodity information to carry out transactions.To some extent,they were excluded from the national market.However,in the 4G period,with the help of internet,the consumption in periphery regions is stimulated,and the urban residents with well-constructed infrastructure increases consumption of various commodities,except for accommodation.They can realize potential demands without paying high bid rent in eastern central area,and their consumption structure is upgraded.City plays a vital role in such improvement. |
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