Population agglomeration in Chinese cities: is it beneft or damage for the quality of economic development?
Abstract: This paper explores the impact of population agglomeration on urban economic development quality in various cities of China. The results show that population agglomeration significantly contributes to the improvement of urban green total factor productivity by increasing population diversification, promoting knowledge spillovers and reducing pollution emission intensity. Moreover, we find that population agglomeration in type II big cities and type I large cities significantly improve green total factor productivity, while the impact of population agglomeration in metropolises and mega-cities on green total factor productivity is not significant. On the one hand, type II big cities and type I large cities are in the period of rising economic development, the population has not yet reached saturation, and there is still a large demographic dividend space. On the other hand, excessive population agglomeration also brings about “urban diseases” such as population congestion and traffic congestion, especially in the metropolises and mega-cities. Finally, using data on producer services and its sub-sectors, we identify a more significant driving effect of high-end talent agglomeration on green total factor productivity.
Keywords: Population agglomeration; population diversification; Quality of economic development; Green total factor productivity; Urban scale; Emerging economy
摘要：本文探讨了中国各个城市人口集聚对城市经济发展质量的影响。结果表明，人口集聚通过提高人口多样化程度、促进知识溢出和降低污染排放强度，显著促进了城市绿色全要素生产率的提高。此外，本文发现Ⅱ型大城市和Ⅰ型大城市的人口集聚显著提高了绿色全要素生产率，而特大城市和超大城市人口集聚的人口集聚对绿色全要素生产率的影响并不显著。一方面，Ⅱ型大城市和Ⅰ型大城市处于经济发展上升期，人口尚未饱和，仍有较大的人口红利空间。另一方面，人口的过度聚集也带来了人口拥挤、交通拥堵等“城市病”，特别是在特大城市和超大城市。最后，利用生产性服务业及其细分行业的数据，我们发现高端人才集聚对绿色全要素生产率的驱动效应更为显著。
关键词：人口聚集；人口多样化；经济发展质量；绿色全要素生产率；城市规模；新兴经济体
来源：
Environmental Science and Pollution Research，2023. PP 1-13.
DOI：https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-25220-4
