An Empirical Study On The Effect Of The City Scale Of Chinese Cities Above Prefecture Levels On Labor Productivity

Since the 1980 s,the number and population of Chinese cities have continuously increased.It is generally believed that based on the existence of agglomeration economies,the larger the size of the city,the higher the urban non-agricultural labor productivity will be.Based on the research results of scholars and the availability of data,this paper selected 187 cities among 286 cities above prefecture level in China and analyzed the effect of the city scale on the urban non-agricultural labor productivity.This paper presented descriptive statistics on the urban scale and non-agricultural labor productivity of 187 prefecture-level cities in China during the period 2011-2016 and made specific statistical description according to the whole,different scale,and different region of the urban scale and labor productivity.At the same time,this paper used the dynamic panel data of 187 prefecture-level cities in China from 2011 to 2016 to build an econometric model based on the production function and performed systematic GMM estimation on the dynamic panel data of 187 prefecture-level cities.This paper empirically studied the influence of scale of 187 prefecture-level cities in China on the urban non-agricultural labor productivity from the perspective of agglomeration economy,and conducted concrete empirical research on the three dimensions of the overall,different scales,and different regions.The results of the article indicated that the scale of cities above prefecture level in China has a significant positive effect on non-agricultural labor productivity.With other conditions unchanged,a one percentage point increase in the size of cities would increase the non-agricultural labor productivity by 7.79 percentage points.The greater the scale of prefecture-level cities,the stronger the agglomeration effect exerted,and the greater the degree of influence on the labor productivity of the city.Among cities divided by four plates,the coefficient of elasticity of nonagricultural labor productivity to city scale in prefecture-level cities in the eastern region is significantly higher than that in the central and western regions,and the coefficient of urban size in prefecture-level cities in the northeast is not significant.The level of labor productivity among prefecture-level cities in China varies greatly.Based on the above findings,the paper proposed the following policy recommendations: If cities in China want to promote the increase in the output level of prefecture-level cities,they should appropriately expand the scale of the city in order to better exert the agglomeration effects of various production factors in the city.Specific measures include: attracting agglomeration of production factors and appropriately expanding the scale of cities;low-grade cities should appropriately raise the level of fiscal expenditure and actively attract foreign investment;strengthen crossregional cooperation among cities and actively create urban agglomerations and industrial clusters.