Core-Periphery Model Of Urban Economic Growth: Empirical Evidence From Chinese City-Level Data (1990-2006)

The geographic nature and openness of China since 1990s make it a feasible application of the Core-Periphery (CP) model, which has hardly explained urban systems in existing studies. Using Chinese city-level data from 1990 to 2006, this paper estimates the impact of spatial interactions in China's urban system on urban economic growth. Our results verify the non-linearity of the CP Model of urban system, present agglomeration shadow in Chinese urban economies. We also find "border effect" of administrative boundaries among Chinese provinces, which prevents urban economic activities from being absorbed by big cities in other provinces, while limiting inter-city agglomeration.