Dialect Diversity,Factor Agglomeration and City Size:Empirical Test Based on Satellite Night-Time Light Data

Since the reform and opening up program was initiated in 1978,China’s urbanization has made rapid progress,but urban development remains unbalanced and insufficient.From the perspective of social and cultural diversity,this paper explores the impact of dialect diversity on city size.Dialect diversity impedes the expansion of cities by causing a trust segmentation and impeding cross-regional factor flow and the factor agglomeration effect.Based on the regional dialect diversity indicator and the NPP-VIIRS city night-time light index of 2016,this paper offers an empirical study of the impact of dialect diversity on city size.Econometric results indicate that dialect diversity has a significantly negative impact on city size.On average,an increase of each dialect sub-category leads to a decrease in city size estimated by the night-time light index by 4.55%.Robustness test and causality identification reveal that the estimated results of this paper have a robust causal relationship.Further empirical research indicates that dialect diversity affects the expansion of city size by inhibiting the flow and agglomeration of labor,capital and technology factors.Our research suggests that the development of diverse and inclusive modern cities needs to balance the costs and benefits of cultural diversity and uniformity,break through cultural barriers,remove cultural prejudices,raise the level of social trust,and give play to the complementary effect of cultural diversity.

Regional Dialect Diversity and Corporate Strategic Aggressiveness

As an important role of the regional culture,dialects have a significant influence on the corporate strategy.Diversity of dialects appears to move firms towards strategic radicalization by weakening the“hometown effect”,enhancing innovation awareness,and increasing the diversification of business.Using A-share listed companies from 2006 to 2018 as sample,based on information from the annual financial statements,this paper argues that higher dialect diversity in the city where enterprise is located leads the corporate strategy to be more aggressive;and the mismatch between strategy and dialectal environment will have a negative effect on corporate performance.After a series of robustness tests and using instrumental variables to solve endogenous problems,the conclusions remain consistent.Further study indicates that the influence of dialect diversity on strategy is enhanced as managers’awareness of the dialectal environment increases,but is weaken if the enterprise is a state-owned enterprise or has larger scale.This research reveals the connection between dialect culture and corporate behavior form a strategic level,provides empirical evidence and enriches the literature for the traditional view of“culture influences strategy”,and has significance on promoting the corporate strategic management practices.

Dialect Diversity and Foreign Direct Investment in China

This paper examines the relationship between dialect diversity and foreign direct investment(FDI)using a dataset of 230 Chinese cities for the period 2000-2014.We find that dialect diversity and FDI absorption are negatively correlated.However,this negative relationship disappears gradually over time.Several underlying mechanisms are identified.In particular,it is found that dialect diversity impedes human capital development and hence obstructs FDI absorption.Our results also show that there are threshold and spatial spillover effects.This research increases knowledge of FDI location choice and has implications for foreign investment policymaking.