Research On The Effect Of Export Trade On City Size

In the process of rapid urbanization in China,there is an orientation of "policy over market",which makes China’s urban development fall into a triple dilemma of resource-spatial mismatch,unbalanced regional development,and derailment of development speed and quality.The introduction of market forces in urban development and the study of the effects and mechanisms of export trade on city size and its distribution play an irreplaceable role in solving the urban development dilemma.What exactly is the impact of export trade on city size and its distribution,and by what path?In view of this,in the theoretical analysis section of this paper,on the one hand,we sort out and summarize the literature related to the effect of export trade on city size,and construct a theoretical analysis framework of export trade affecting city size and its distribution by incorporating factors such as factor market,industrial agglomeration,income distribution and ecological environment;on the other hand,we derive a mathematical and theoretical model of export trade affecting city size and its distribution,so as to propose that export trade has an inverted U-shaped effect on city size.In the part of empirical analysis,firstly,in order to verify hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2,panel vector autoregression,instrumental variables method and generalized moments estimation are used to test the direction of the effect of export on city size and city size distribution,and hypothesis 1 and hypothesis 2 are preliminarily verified to be valid,and by replacing variables and The results are robustly tested by replacing variables and estimation methods as well as exogenous shocks of FTA construction.To make the findings more informative,the heterogeneous effects of export trade on city size in different regions,different environmental resource levels and different development stages are also discussed.Second,after verifying the direction of the role of export trade on city size and its distribution,we further analyze the inner mechanism of the role of export trade on city size and its distribution through influencing factor markets,industrial agglomeration patterns,labor income distribution and ecological environment,and propose hypotheses 3 and 4 in this paper,i.e.,export trade affects city size through influencing factor markets and industrial agglomeration patterns on the one hand,and influencing labor income distribution and ecological environment on the other.On the other hand,export trade affects the distribution of city size by influencing income distribution and ecological environment,and hypothesis 3 and hypothesis 4 are verified to be valid through the mediating effect model.Again,in a further study,the level of transportation infrastructure construction and the degree of influence by Confucian culture in cities are used to represent the physical living environment and the social and cultural environment of cities,respectively,to test whether there is a moderating effect of both in the process of export trade on city size.Finally,we propose effective policy recommendations on how to reasonably build cities and realize"people-centered" urbanization,taking into account the basic conditions of urbanization in China.The main findings of this paper include:First,there is an inverted U-shaped effect of export trade on city size.Specifically,before export trade reaches a critical value,export trade can increase the attractiveness of cities,promote labor flow to cities,and expand city size,while after export trade exceeds a critical value,the attractiveness of export trade to cities decreases and even inhibits city size growth.This inverted U-shaped relationship exists in the more economically developed east-central region as well as in non-resource-based cities,but not in the less economically developed western and northeastern regions and in resource-based cities.Before 2010,the effect of export trade on city size shows a linear positive characteristic,while after 2010,the effect of export trade on city size only shows an inverted U-shaped characteristic.Second,the effect of export trade on city size distribution shows a linear characteristic.When export trade expands,it makes the spatial Gini coefficient of cities decrease,the regional concentration of city size decreases,and the distribution of city size within a province tends to be balanced.This effect of export trade on city size distribution is significant only in the eastern and northeastern regions,and the effect of export trade on city size distribution is greater after 2010 than before 2010.The above findings are endogenously treated and pass the robustness test.Third,export trade indirectly affects city size by regulating the operation of factor markets and screening cities to achieve specialized agglomeration patterns,and indirectly affects city size distribution by reducing the income gap between different cities within a province and widening the ecological environment gap,so that the distribution structure of city size within a province changes to a balanced development.Fourth,both transportation infrastructure and Confucian culture have moderating effects on the influence of export trade on city size,but the mechanisms of their effects are different.Transportation infrastructure can indirectly regulate the effect of export trade on city size by influencing the external objective environment of export trade and city size,while Confucian culture directly influences labor migration decisions,thus regulating the effect of export trade on city size.Fifth,transportation infrastructure and Confucian culture have the same moderating effect in the influence of export trade on city size,but the mechanism of their effects is different.Transportation infrastructure affects the relationship between export trade and city size distribution by reducing the average wage gap within the province,while Confucian culture directly regulates the relationship between export trade and city size distribution.According to the above findings,local governments should,on the one hand,choose the urban development model scientifically,play the role of market forces represented by export trade in the process of urban development,pay attention to the disparity between regions,and advocate balanced development;on the other hand,they should improve export competitiveness,improve the export trade environment,follow the market law,and give full play to comparative advantages according to local conditions.Only in this way can we realize "people-centered" urbanization and create a pattern of high-level opening to the outside world.