Yinxin Su, Yuzhe Wu, Charles L. Choguill, Jiaojiao Luo · 5 authors
Transit-oriented development (TOD) is a sustainable land use planning tool based on land value-added capturing and urban quality improvements and has been vigorously promoted by Chinese city governments. However, few studies have been conducted on the role of the ‘land finance’ model and on people-oriented planning approach focusing on urban inclusive growth. This paper examines the current implementation of TOD in China and attempts to explore the approach to the paradigm transformation of urban development in China. Evidence from Hangzhou illustrates that the current land-centered and property-led urban rail transit construction, although contributing to the economic sustainability of ‘urban development strategy’, has led to unaffordable housing prices and failed to decentralize population away from downtown areas. This study highlights inclusive growth models which integrate TOD planning with affordable housing for the floating population, not only to ensure equity in housing affordability and space accessibility but also to promote polycentric urban development strategies. The locations of inclusive growth models include new towns/sub-cities, traditional cores and suburbs, which are all based on existing industrial cluster areas and promote the full utilization of existing public service facilities.
Popular theories claim that innovation activities should be located in large cities because of more favorable environmental conditions that are absent in smaller cities or peripheral areas. Germany provides a counterexample to such theories. We argue that a major reason behind the geography of innovation in Germany is the country’s pronounced legacy of political fragmentation that created a decentralized settlement structure, shaped the geographic distribution of universities and public research institutions, and brought about a rather uniform and local access to finance. We show how political fragmentation influenced the emergence of historic centers of knowledge production and impacts the positioning of innovation activities today. We conclude that institutional factors should play a more prominent role in theories that aim at explaining the spatial distribution of innovation activities.
Theresa Grafeneder-Weissteiner, Ingrid Kubin, Klaus Prettner, Alexia Prskawetz · 5 authors
This article introduces a social planner version of a model central to the New Economic Geography for explicitly answering whether the symmetric equilibrium outcome of the decentralized market economy is socially desirable. We find that savings incentives are too weak, resulting in an inefficiently low capital stock and therefore an inadequate number of product varieties. The optimal subsidy and taxation scheme to remedy these distortions resulting from the monopolistic competition structure is shown to be a sales subsidy financed by a lump-sum tax that results in marginal cost pricing. Interestingly, implementing this optimal policy might actually destroy the stability of the symmetric equilibrium and result in unintended agglomeration processes.
Highly skilled human capital is usually also highly mobile. Concerns regarding interregional migration revolve around suboptimal public financing of higher education rooted in free-riding behaviour if budget responsibilities are decentralized. This investigation sets out to answer whether cross-state mobility of students in general and individual taste variation in the preference for ‘home’ and ‘university’ states in particular justify concerns about the free-riding behaviour of state governments. We analyse graduates’ location choices when leaving university using a mixed logit model and subsequently relate the revealed taste variation to individual characteristics. The results suggest some attachment to ‘home’ states that justify concerns about potential free-riding. However, substantial taste variation exists and is partly associated with the quality of human capital. State governments free-riding on the investment of others therefore may face a quality trade-off.
The creative economy has attracted increasing attention from academia and policymakers for more than two decades. However, despite the flourishing literature on this topic, its complex connection with development and its role in strengthening resilience are yet to be properly examined. The paper addresses this issue by investigating how different cities in Romania, with a different intensity of creative industries, have managed to resist and to recover from the aftermath of the Great Recession. Our findings reveal that, as a whole, creative industries strengthen urban resistance against a recession, but do not necessarily fasten urban recovery. As our results suggest, this might be due to the asymmetrical impact across different groups of creative industries. Besides a creative economy proliferation, other factors are also identified as significant resilience drivers. Whilst a better access to healthcare services, higher local investments and a higher decentralization of local budgets appear to enhance the cities’ resistance, higher shares of agriculture and finance, as well as a higher income per capita appear to correlate with a faster urban recovery.
When economy grows, and resident’s needs are diversifying, finance starts to become decentralization of power as a result. The offer of the public service by the centralized government is suitable to unify the citizen’s preference of the wide area, but what the local government where inhabitants are the nearest carries is desirable for the offer of the community service in a small range(Oates’s decentralization theorem). On the other hand, it becomes to cause the difference of various public services in each area in fiscal decentralization. Therefore, it is important how we measure progress of the financial decentralization in each area and the financial decentralization of power difference between each area. The purpose of this report analyzes economic and fiscal decentralization disparities in China from the measurement of the tile index based on the data of “the Chinese statistics summary (2000 through 2007)” before and after the western great development, at the same time it analyzes whether the relation between economy and financial decentralization is correlative, in other words, Oates’s decentralization theorem is concluded in Chinese economy. As a result of analysis, following three points were confirmed. 1. Expenditure decentralization disparities and difference of the district production per capita have positive correlation. Therefore, Oates’s decentralization theorem may be concluded. 2. However, when I consider population movement, Fiscal empowerment disparities and difference of the district production per capita have negative correlation. As a result, when I consider the side political, Oates’s decentralization theorem may not be concluded. 3. In the major cities of the coastal place such as Beijing and Shanghai, as for the growth rate of expenditure decentralization and the original expenditure decentralization, these coefficients of correlation were negative. Oates’s decentralization theorem is not concluded in these cities, and it is predicted that a factor except the finance strongly works for economic growth.The conclusion whether or not Oates’s decentralization theorem was concluded remains much more vague by the complicated political economic system in this way in China.
Regional disparities in terms of income and employment showed marked decline under various regional policies during the Period of Rapid Economic Growth. However, the drastic changes in Japanese industries after the Oil Crises in 1970s have caused structural recessions in some regions which have been dependent on resourceand energy-intensive industries. Furthermore, the economic activities are rapidly concentrating in Tokyo Metropolitan Region under the internationalization of Japanese economy. Regional income disparities began to widen again since the early 1980s under these circumstances.This paper aims to examine the trend of industrial differences in Japanese regions in the postwar period, and to identify its current problems. Three analytical methods, namely the analysis of coefficient of variation, the rate-share analysis, and the shiftshare analysis are applied using employment data for the years 1955 to 1985.Major findings of the study are summarized as follows:(1) Manufacturing sector showed a clear decentralization of employment during the period 1960-1985, whereas the decentralization of tertiary sector was not very clear.(2) Marked decentralization was found in the high-tech machinery industry which have been rapidly concentrating in North and South Tohoku Regions. Despite the recession of manufacturing industries after the Oil Crises, these regions showed remarkable employment growth.(3) The shift-share analysis of manufacturing sector has showed low growth performance in the western part of Japan. These regions had been specialized in the heavy and petoro-chemical industries during the Period of Rapid Economic Growth, and suffered much damage in the Oil Crises.(4) Locational patterns of tertiary sector differ among industries. Finance, retail and wholesale industries have been concentrated in metropolitan regions, whereas local regions have been specialized in the service industry.(5) The shift-share analysis of tertiary sector has identified little difference of growth performance which comes from the industrial structure of each region. However, a marked difference has been found in the differential shift components between metropolitan and local regions, which indicates a clear gap of locational attractiveness among them.
During the periods of high economic growth, outmigration from agricultural and mountain villages to urban areas increased rapidly. As a result overpopulation in the urban areas and depopulation in rural areas have become social problems.The rural areas play a very important role particularly in supplying food, conserving national land, cultivating the head sources of a stream and conserving the natural environment. However, it has become difficult to manage the community and these areas have not been able to play the abovementioned roles in depopulated areas. Therefore, the Japanese government has taken a number of measures to promote rural areas and alleviate some of the problems. In this paper the depopulation problem is considered from the viewpoint of local finance. Attention is paid particularly to the role of intergovernmental grants.Firstly, using a concept of local public goods, the inefficiency which results from free migration is considered. If in moving from one region to another a migrant does not account for the effect of his moving on the tax price of the public good of residents in the region he leaves or enters, Tiebout type of decentralized free market equilibria may not be Pareto-efficient. And if this externality is not internalized by centralized decision-making, the one region may be overpopulated and the other underpopulated. In the framework of a simple model the source of inefficiency of resource allocation is shown. Using the same model the analysis is extended to consider the role for intergovernmental grants in the face of such inefficiencies. And it is suggested that the central government may be justified in using a system of intergovernmental grants to overcome these inefficiencies.In order to explore the role of intergovernmental grants, the model is applied to Agatsuma district of Gunma Prefecture, a district which includes a number of the depopulated towns and villages. Firstly, settled accounts of revenue and expenditure from 1965 F. Y. to 1982 F. Y. are investigated. The percentage of transfer payments including grants from both the Japanese government and the government of Gunma Prefecture has become very large since the laws of the depopulated areas enforced. Secondly, principal expenditures are determined for each town and village. In each town expenditure on education and promotion for agriculture and construction account for a very large percentage of total expenditure. Finally, the level of components which constitutes residents' utility is examined. There is still a difference between the levels of many components in this district and those in the other region.From the above results it is shown that the situation is going to a desired direction by various measures, particularly intergovernmental grants. However, in some areas there is still a possibility of the situation deteriorating. Therefore, it is necessary to allocate intergovernmental grants carefully as well as encouraging each local government to work autonomously.