In response to the growing interest in ways to take forward an agenda for a more global urban studies, this essay advocates a comparative approach to theory building which can help to develop new ...understandings of the expanding and diverse world of cities and urbanization processes, building theory from different contexts, resonating with a diversity of urban outcomes but being respectful of the limits of always located insights. The essay is inspired by the potential of the comparative imagination but, mindful of the limitations of formal comparative methods, which in a quasi‐scientific format can drastically restrict the scope of comparing, it outlines ways to reformat comparative methods in order to put them to work more effectively for a more global urban studies. The essay proposes a new typology for comparative methods based on the vernacular practices of urban comparison, tracing these through the archives of comparative urbanism. It also suggests some lines of philosophical reflection for reframing the scope and style of theorizing. New repertoires of comparativism are indicated which support the possibility of a revisable urban theory, starting from anywhere.
Rapid development of High-speed railways (HSR) in China has attracted serious research interest. This paper proposes an endogenous economic growth model to explain how and why HSR may lead to faster ...economic growth and regional convergence in China using data from 285 cities in 2010-2014. TSLS estimation suggests that HSR has a powerful impact on urban economic growth and regional convergence. It suggests that HSR was a potent driver responsible for the sustainable and steady economic expansion of the Chinese regions in the aftermath of the world financial crisis.
Cities are pivotal hubs of socioeconomic activities, and consumption in cities contributes to global environmental pressures. Compiling city-level multi-regional input-output (MRIO) tables is ...challenging due to the scarcity of city-level data. Here we propose an entropy-based framework to construct city-level MRIO tables. We demonstrate the new construction method and present an analysis of the carbon footprint of cities in China's Hebei province. A sensitivity analysis is conducted by introducing a weight reflecting the heterogeneity between city and province data, as an important source of uncertainty is the degree to which cities and provinces have an identical ratio of intermediate demand to total demand. We compare consumption-based emissions generated from the new MRIO to results of the MRIO based on individual city input-output tables. The findings reveal a large discrepancy in consumption-based emissions between the two MRIO tables but this is due to conflicting benchmark data used in the two tables.
•Frontier spaces are transitional reconfigurations of institutional arrangements.•Frontier spaces are related to the expansion of capitalism.•Frontier spaces are sites of contentious encounters over ...authority.•The authority to territorialize does not precede territorialization, but emerges from successful terrritorializations.•When frontier moments offer new opportunities, old social contracts give way for the struggle of new ones.
The expansion of capitalism produces contests over the definition and control of resources. On a global scale, new patterns of resource exploration, extraction, and commodification create new territories. This takes place within a dynamic of frontiers and territorialization. Frontier dynamics dissolve existing social orders—property systems, political jurisdictions, rights, and social contracts—whereas territorialization is shorthand for all the dynamics that establish them and re-order space anew. Frontier moments offer new opportunities, and old social contracts give way to struggles over new ones. As new types of resource commodification emerge, institutional orders are sometimes undermined or erased, and sometimes reinterpreted, reinvented, and recycled. New property regimes, new forms of authority, and the attendant struggles for legitimacy over the ability to define proper uses and users follow frontier moments. The drawing of borders and the creation of orders around new resources profoundly rework patterns of authority and institutional architectures. We argue that the territorialization of resource control is a set of processes that precedes legitimacy and authority, fundamentally challenging and replacing existing patterns of spatial control, authority, and institutional orders. It is dynamics of this sort that the articles in this collection explore: the outcomes produced in the frontier space, the kinds of authority that emerge through control over space and the people in it, and the battles for legitimacy that this entails. This collection explores the emergence of frontier spaces, arguing that these are transitional, liminal spaces in which existing regimes of resource control are suspended, making way for new ones.
This study constructs a market area evolution model from the perspective of economic subject and location matching under the hypothesis of non-homogeneous space. It is proved that transportation ...development can reduce transport costs, which is closely related to location factor endowments. As such, we believe that when analyse the economic impact of new means of transportation, both overall analysis and different line analysis should be taken into account. Therefore, the economic impact of high-speed rail were studied by DID and PSM-DID methods. The results show that China's high-speed rail construction has a positive effect on economic growth and will become an important force in reshaping the organization of China’s spatial economy. However, the effect is different for different high-speed rail lines. Thus, Chinese government needs to fully consider the economic impact of high-speed rail. In addition, the government needs to formulate a high-speed rail economic belt plan in accordance with the characteristics of different rail lines. Furthermore, China needs to adjust its regional development strategy and regional policies accordingly, because the role of high-speed rail is mainly depends on whether a location has the necessary conditions to achieve the desired effect. Therefore, a city should adjust and recombine the local factor endowment to align with high-speed rail if it wants to capitalize on the new high-speed rail. Otherwise, the introduction of high-speed rail likely to adversely impact economic growth, which make the city a peripheral city.
This article examines the emergence of city‐region governance as a specific state spatial selectivity in post‐reform China. The process has been driven by the state in response to the crisis of ...economic decentralization, and to vicious inter‐city competition and uncoordinated development. As part of the recentralization of state power, the development of urban clusters (chengshiqun) as interconnected city‐regions is now a salient feature of ‘new urbanization' policy. I argue in this article that the Chinese city‐region corresponds to specific logics of scale production. Economic globalization has led to the development of local economies and further created the need to foster ‘regional competitiveness'. To cope with regulatory deficit at the regional level, three mechanisms have been orchestrated by the state: administrative annexation, spatial plan preparation and regional institution building, which reflect recent upscaling in post‐reform governance.
Shift-Share Designs: Theory and Inference Adão, Rodrigo; Kolesár, Michal; Morales, Eduardo
The Quarterly journal of economics,
11/2019, Volume:
134, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Abstract
We study inference in shift-share regression designs, such as when a regional outcome is regressed on a weighted average of sectoral shocks, using regional sector shares as weights. We ...conduct a placebo exercise in which we estimate the effect of a shift-share regressor constructed with randomly generated sectoral shocks on actual labor market outcomes across U.S. commuting zones. Tests based on commonly used standard errors with 5% nominal significance level reject the null of no effect in up to 55% of the placebo samples. We use a stylized economic model to show that this overrejection problem arises because regression residuals are correlated across regions with similar sectoral shares, independent of their geographic location. We derive novel inference methods that are valid under arbitrary cross-regional correlation in the regression residuals. We show using popular applications of shift-share designs that our methods may lead to substantially wider confidence intervals in practice.
Green innovation has been positioned as an effective way to balance economic development and environmental governance. However, the impact of green innovation (i.e., innovation relating to the ...environmentally sound technologies (ESTs)) on carbon emission performance in a large developing country, such as China, has been paid little attention. This paper investigates the impact of green innovation on carbon emission performance based on a panel data set covering 218 prefecture-level cities in China from 2007 to 2013. First, we examine whether heterogeneous green innovations have a synergistic effect on carbon emission performance using the two-way fixed effect model, instrumental variable method, and spatial econometric model. Moreover, using a causal mediation effect model, we identify four kinds of potential transmission channels of green innovation affecting carbon emission performance: energy consumption structure effect, industrial structure effect, urbanization effect, and foreign direct investment (FDI) effect. The results indicate a positive effect of green innovation and its sub-categories on carbon emission performance in China. However, a noteworthy phenomenon is that direct carbon emission-reduction innovation and green administrative innovation have a weaker effect on carbon emission performance than other kinds of green innovations. In addition, the positive effect has an evident heterogeneity in different kinds of cities. To be specific, green innovation has an evident positive impact on carbon emission performance in key cities for environmental protection, resource-based cities, non-resource-based cities, and central cities. Meanwhile, a “snowball” effect and a symbiotic effect of carbon emission performance exist in local cities and between cities, respectively. Finally, we find that green innovation significantly decreases and increases carbon emission performance through industrial structure effect and FDI effect, respectively.
•We investigate the impact of heterogeneous green innovations on carbon emission performance in China.•We use a panel data set covering China's 218 prefecture-level cities over 2007–2013.•Instrumental variable method and spatial econometric model are employed.•We find a positive effect of heterogeneous green innovations on carbon emission performance in China.•Green innovation improves carbon emission performance through some mediation effects.
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