Yasuaki Kikukawa (p), Keisuke Takano, Morito Tsutsumi

Functional region (e.g. employment area or commuting zone) plays an important role in understanding the actual conditions of local socio-economic activities. The definition of functional region, however, tends to be implemented strongly depending on large administrative district, such as prefectures, and there are no unified views on how to define the functional region based on actual interregional connectedness. Under the circumstances, recently the investigations regarding the methodologies to define the functional region from social network structure have been conducted, applying the method of community detection based on modularity index. While many studies have addressed the definition based on person's activity, little is known about the definition based on firm's activity. The aim of this study is to define functional region using inter-firm transaction data, based on community detection method, and implement the comparison between the results obtained and commonly used administrative district. In this research, we used inter-firm transaction data held by TEIKOKU DATABANK LTD, a private credit research company. They interview each company by direct visits and collecting information about business partners, so that they can grasp business relationships between companies. This study contributes to a detection of hidden interregional clusters omitted within the purview of existing administrative district and a presentation of quantitative implication for the decision making toward inter-municipal cooperation.

Ferenc Szilagyi (p)

Subsequent to the regime change and due to the start of the integration process, Central European state borders have been completely reinterpreted. While they formerly had a strongly marked dividing role, nowadays state borders are becoming virtual and those acting as barriers are continuously withering away. Today, Hungary has already become a member of the Schengen area and against all political procrastination Romania’s accession is also imminent. With the homogenizing economic area urban hierarchy has also changed since the subjects under discussion are mostly the previously isolated urban systems of the neighbouring countries, which are being touched by the breath of integration as well. As it is to be expected, a hierarchical relationship will develop between the settlements located on the two sides of the border. The emergence of an integrated, cross-border metropolitan area is most likely in the case of the two major cities, Debrecen and Nagyvárad, being contiguous with each other in the middle section of the state border (Süli-Zakar 2010). However, besides their cooperation actions, they are also each other’s main rivals, since both of them carry the chance of becoming the regional centre of the north-eastern part of the Carpathian basin, which has several economic, infrastructural and national political aspects.

Qiangmin Xi (p), Guoping Li

Based on the Annual Survey of Industrial Firms in China during 1998-2009,this paper explore whether the migration of manufacturing enterprises within city can promote the firm’s efficiency, and then verify the influence of comparative advantage and firm heterogeneity on the effect based on the theory of comparative advantage and‘New’New Economic Geography . Aimed to overcome the deviation of self-selection and heterogeneity, we use the differences-in-differences propensity score method. The findings of this study show that average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) of firm relocation is significantly positive, which means firm relocation within city have a significant upgrading effect on the total factor productivity in general. Furthermore, the increase in comparative advantage from emigration to immigration can help to boost the firm’s efficiency improvement. The effect of enterprise migration on promoting the productivity show significant discrepancy on different efficiency enterprises, and firm relocation is more effective for the low efficiency firm. The above conclusions are still robust after considering different time, ownership type and taking different total factor productivity estimation method respectively. This article does not only enrich the understanding of the heterogeneity of firm relocation under the perspective in micro firm , but also provides empirical evidence for the city government to develop differential industry guidance policy combined with the comparative advantage of each district. (This paper is funded by National Social Science Foundation of China，No. 15CJY055).