国有经济与城市规模分布演进

State- owned Economy and the Evolution of City Size Distribution in China

中国城市体系过度分散逐渐成为学界的共识,本文探讨了导致中国城市体系过度分散的体制原因。长期以来,中国政府倾向于对整个国家的经济社会领域实施全面的控制,在地域广阔与人口众多的国情之下,这种全面控制的管理思路内生出了过度分散的城市规模分布。基于城市经济学理论,本文将中国各省区看成城市体系,采用2000-2009年的省区面板数据,以国有经济比重作为国家管制程度的代理变量,对上述理论假说进行了验证。实证发现,国有经济比重显著降低了大城市居民数比重,一系列的稳健性检验仍然支持理论假说。这一发现说明,放松与减少政府管制是构造更加有效合理的城市体系的重要途径。

Excessive fragmentation of Chinese urban system has gradually become a consensus for scholars. This paper discusses the institutional causes of excessive fragmentation of Chinese urban system. For a long time, the Chinese government tends to implement comprehensive control on the country＇s economic and social fields. Under vast and populous conditions, the comprehensive control management pattern leads to excessive dispersed city size distribution. Based on the theoretical development of urban economics, exploiting Chinese provincial data between the years 2000 - 2009, regarding Chinese provinces as urban system, treating the proportion of state - owned economy as the proxy variable as state control level, we test this theoretical hypothesis. We find thestate owned proportion significantly reduces urban concentration rate, and the robust tests further support our hypothesis. The finding means that state control relaxing is a feasible way of effective urban system construction.