Decentralisation has frequently been sold as a means to increase well-being and development. Yet, questions remain as to whether decentralisation improves economic performance. This is possibly ...because decentralisation processes have often led to ‘unfunded mandates’, that is, a mismatch between the powers transferred to subnational tiers of government and the resources allocated to them. In this article, we analyse how unfunded mandates shape regional economic growth across 518 regions in 30 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries over the period 1997–2018. There is a negative, statistically significant, and robust impact of unfunded mandates on economic growth. This effect is higher in more politically and less fiscally decentralised regions and in regions with a higher level of wealth. Unfunded mandates thus represent a serious drag on the potential positive economic effect of political decentralisation. Hence, for those benefits to materialise, better not more decentralisation – ensuring that finance follows function – should be pursued.
This article uses the Super-efficiency DEA mothod to calculate the regional ecological efficiency, and selects a Tobit model to verify the impact of green finance and natural resource abundance on ...Chinese regional ecological efficiency. Results as follows: (1) The ecological efficiency of the eastern region is highest, and western region is lowest. Most of the low-efficiency areas are concentrated in the west. Then the ecological efficiency of most areas in Chian has shown an increasing trend. (2) From the perspective of explanatory variables, there is a negative correlation between the overall national green finance and eco-efficiency, which is manifested in a non-linear “U”-shaped characteristic; green finance and eco-efficiency in the central and western regions have negative correlation and “U”-shaped characteristic of non-linear relationship, but the east of China does not passed the significance test. (3) There is an inverted U-shaped relationship between the country's overall resource abundance and ecological efficiency. And it is not statistically significant in the eastern region, but it shows a significant inverted U-shaped relationship in the central and west of China. (4) The impact of FDI on China's regional eco-efficiency is generally positive. FDI in the central and western regions has negative correlation with eco-efficiency, but FDI in the eastern region is positively related to eco-efficiency; there are all negatively correlated in whole countey and regions between industrial structure and eco-efficiency; the level of regional economic development is generally positively related to regional eco-efficiency, and in the eastern region's eco-efficiency is positive, and the impact on the other two regions is negative.
•Constructed an ecological efficiency evaluation index system.•Measured the eco-efficiency of different regions.•Verify the impact of green finance on Chinese regional ecological efficiency.•Verify the impact of natural resource abundance on Chinese regional ecological efficiency.•Provide advice for sustainable development.
Entrepreneurship culture, knowledge spillovers and the growth of regions. Regional Studies. An extensive literature has emerged in regional studies linking organization-based measures of ...entrepreneurship (e.g., self-employment, new start-ups) to regional economic performance. A limitation of the extant literature is that the measurement of entrepreneurship is not able to incorporate broader conceptual views, such as behaviour, of what actually constitutes entrepreneurship. This paper fills this gap by linking the underlying and also more fundamental and encompassing entrepreneurship culture of regions to regional economic performance. The empirical evidence suggests that those regions exhibiting higher levels of entrepreneurship culture tend to have higher employment growth. Robustness checks using causal methods confirm this finding.
Improving the entrepreneurial ecosystem plays an important role in the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries, and achieving the coordinated development of economy and environment ...among cities is important for improving the quality and efficiency of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. Using the panel data of 286 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016, this study adopts the global reference super efficiency slack-based measure model considering undesirable output to measure China's urban ecological efficiency. In addition, the spatial lag model is used to investigate the impacts of industrial structure advancement and rationalization on ecological efficiency, and the impacts of the heterogeneity of industrial structure and economic development under the distortion of resource dependence on ecological efficiency. The results show that: every one-unit increase in the advancement of industrial structure will lead to a 0.0741 unit increase in ecological efficiency, but the high dependence on natural resources will inhibit the promoting effect of industrial structure advancement on ecological efficiency, and such an inhibiting effect will weaken with the improvement of economic development level; moreover, the influence coefficient of industrial structure rationalization on ecological efficiency is not significant, nor is it affected by the natural resource dependence and the level of economic development. This paper hereby proposes that in the process of promoting green entrepreneurial activity at present, the Chinese government should give full play to the role of industrial structure advancement on improving ecological efficiency, actively break through the constraints restricting the impact of industrial structure rationalization, reduce excessive dependence on resource industries, improve the level of regional economic development, and strive to transform resource-intensive industries to technology-intensive industries to support the sustainable development of a green entrepreneurship ecosystem.
•Industrial structure (IS) advancement significantly affects ecological efficiency.•No correlation exists between IS rationalization and ecological efficiency.•Higher dependence on natural resources distorts IS advancement.•Heterogeneity exists in the impact of IS rationalization on ecological efficiency.
Resilience is system specific rather than shock specific. This study proposes a new measure of engineering resilience based on the theories of simple harmonic motion and regime switching, and it ...examines the determinants of resilience among China's regional economies to the 2008 subprime crisis. Enhancing industrial diversity, human capital stock, trade openness and financial liberalization can improve economic resilience. Pre-crisis economic performance had a negative effect on regional economic resilience in China. More efforts are needed to enhance regional economic resilience in China by fostering entrepreneurship. The results provide information for policies to address external shocks and promote sustainable regional economic development.
The provincial panel data from 2005 to 2018 in this paper classifies institutional variables into the degree of market resource allocation, market openness, and property rights diversification. It ...empirically analyzes the relationship between economic growth, natural resources, and institutions quality. The research results show that the “resource curse” proposition is valid at the provincial level in China. The low-quality market resource allocation system and property rights system curbed the potential advantages of natural resources to promote economic development and caused the “resource curse” effect. Similarly, the increase in market openness can ease the “resource curse” effect. Moreover, in the context of the spatial agglomeration of natural resources, there is a negative spatial correlation between economic growth, and the “resource curse” effect is more severe in areas where resources are more abundant. In addition, it is found that natural resource endowments will affect the quality of the system. Under the effect of the causal cycle mechanism, the lower the quality of the system, the more severe “resource curse” effect.
•Multi-dimensional selection institutional quality index.•The “resource curse” proposition is valid at the provincial level in China.•Negative correlation between natural resources and economic growth.•Low institutional quality leads to serious “resource curse".
New path creation processes are a vital component of regional economic development. This paper establishes a behavioural framework to examine and understand such processes. It is argued that human ...agency and the network dynamics through which these agents interact are at the heart of new path creation processes. In particular, effective new path creation requires the formation of collective forms of agency based on strong strategic networks underpinned by a shared commitment. Regions that are equipped with such agency and networks are more likely to be capable of embracing and managing the economic complexity and adaptability necessary to generate the innovation associated with new development paths.
We assess the impact of the EU Regional Policy on regional economic growth by applying a new evaluation strategy, which integrates mediation analysis with a quasi-experimental framework. Using the ...R&D expenditure as an indicator of innovation capability, we evaluate how much of the total effect of the EU Regional Policy is due to R&D in the poorest EU regions. Consistently with the previous literature, we found a positive impact of the overall policy on economic growth, but, among the convergence regions, those investing a higher proportion of funds in R&D have the same convergence rate as regions investing more in other priorities. These findings confirm that the EU Regional Policy played an important role in the economic recovery of the poorest regions in the aftermath of the Great Recession. However, focusing resources on R&D does not seem to provide additional economic benefits, at least in the short run.
This article reviews the literature on regional economics and economic geography, in connection with tourism to identify theoretical models, attempting to explain the role of tourism in regional ...development and growth, and their empirical applications. The review finds that in their early days, theories of regional development did not include tourism, mainly because the regional economics and location research community did not consider tourism significant enough to influence economic development but also because regional science researchers tend to give priority to manufacturing above services, while development planners tend to prioritize urban above rural. This neglect of tourism as a research field in its own right has led the tourism sector to develop its own scholarly agenda suitable to their own business needs, such as destination competitiveness and tourism promotion. The literature review here concludes upon suggested future directions required to further develop regional tourism research as a study based on economic development and growth.
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