Urban Size Distribution And Regional Economic Development

Generally speaking,within a country,various economic activities are not evenly distributed in space.Various economic activities tend to be concentrated in certain areas with comparative advantages,so there is often an imbalance between regions.For the interior of the region,the size distribution of the city is usually unbalanced,with large and medium-sized cities.From an economic efficiency point of view,spatial imbalances can be beneficial or harmful.Based on the existence of comparative advantage,spatial imbalance brings about scale effect and agglomeration effect,which may be beneficial because it brings about productivity improvement.However,if it is caused by a spatial imbalance caused by not internalizing the external economy,it may be harmful.This paper mainly studies the relationship between urban scale distribution and economic development in China from the perspective of spatial imbalance.The first chapter elaborates the research background of this paper and points out the problems existing between regions and cities in the process of economic construction in China.In the second chapter,the relevant theories and literature at domestic and abroad are sorted out,and the research methods and progress of this topic by predecessors are summarized.The third chapter analyses the theoretical basis of the impact of spatial imbalance on economic development,and finds out the specific forms of the impact of spatial imbalance on economic development.Chapter 4 chooses relevant data to make an empirical analysis on the relationship between urban scale distribution and regional economic development.The fifth chapter draws the conclusion of this study based on the above analysis,and puts forward the direction of urban construction in China,which provides practical reference and decision support for China's modernization construction.Specifically,after analyzing the distribution of urban scale in China,it is found that the constraints of large cities in China for a long time have resulted in the small difference of urban scale.At the same time,the spatial agglomeration of urban population does not match the spatial agglomeration of economy and land,and the population agglomeration lags behind the economic agglomeration and land agglomeration for a long time.Finally,there are obstacles to the inter-regional population flow,leading to the regional agglomeration.The gap of per capita income between regions is large.It is the best choice for policymakers to achieve the balance of regional development by realizing the free flow of population.From a national perspective,if we only look at the data of prefecture-level cities,from the 1984-2016,China's urban scale has been relatively concentrated,the power law index obtained by the regression of the Ziff law is higher than 1,Turning the perspective from the whole country to the four major economic zones,the conclusion is still that the city scale is relatively concentrated,but there are differences between the regions.The urban size distribution in the east is basically in line with the Ziff distribution,and the power law index is very close to 1.Turning to the distribution of urban scales from the perspective of each province,after adding county-level cities,we can find that the distribution of cities in most provinces is relatively uniform,and the power law index is long under 1,only a few excessive concentration has occurred in several provinces.The urban agglomeration economy is caused by the large-scale economic activities concentrated on a small amount of land,but the phenomenon does not still exist,so there is a reasonable concentration level.At this level of concentration,economic growth can be maximized.In the empirical study,we use the dynamic panel and the system GMM method.The empirical results give the support of the inverted U-shaped relationship.That is,as the urban concentration increases,the regional economic development level will increase accordingly.But after the concentration reaches a certain level,the continued concentration of the population in large cities will reduce the level of regional economic development.For the proportion of the population size of the first city,the proportion of the population size of the first two cities,and the number of large cities to measure the size distribution of the city,the results show that the urban scale distribution of most provinces in China is not concentrated,the first city is small,large cities Less in quantity.Based on the above analysis,this paper proposes to weak the restrictions on population mobility between regions,give full play to the central government's macro-control functions,establish a policy support system to promote industrial transfer,further encourage the development of non-public economy,build regional innovation systems and policy formulation to adapt to local conditions.