Jin Guo (p)

Benefit from externalities, urban agglomerations are playing more and more important roles in regional economic development, and these externalities can be subdivided into two types according to their disparate action mechanisms, but the literature has failed to pay sufficient attention to their variations. In this paper, we reasonably subdivided urban agglomerations’ externalities into the pecuniary externality and the technology externality, and then made comparative theoretical studies of their manifestations, mechanisms, and key factors. After that, we took China’s five national key construction urban agglomerations as samples to gain insight into the externalities associated with Chinese urban agglomerations. The results indicated that urban agglomerations’ pecuniary externality manifested as inter-urban capital allocation and that its technology externality manifested as inter-urban technology spillover. Currently, the key factor for China’s five national key construction urban agglomerations’ pecuniary externality is market size, i.e., the pursuit of larger market size was one main motivation in forming Chinese urban agglomerations, but the inter-urban capital allocation did not evince a trend of shifting to cities with higher labor productivity. The key factor for China’s five national key construction urban agglomerations’ technical externality was economic density, i.e., the pursuit of higher economic density was another main motivation in forming Chinese urban agglomerations, but both cities’ own research and development activities and the spread of the same from other cities failed to improve urban agglomerations’ technological levels. Moreover, there was no evidence suggesting that diversification or specialization of industrial structure related to urban agglomerations’ pecuniary externality or technology externality. The regressions of dummy variables indicated that there were no significant differences in the pecuniary externality between China’s five national key construction urban agglomerations’ core cities and surrounding cities; however, their technology externality presented complex differences.

Gabor Bodnar (p), Zoltan Egri , Peter Kovacs

In the presentation we analyse the special features of the spatial structure of Central and Eastern Europe, a region still in the phase of transformation. There are numerous antecedents of this topic; the corresponding studies have delineated both the developed and underdeveloped areas, as well as other intermediate areas, leading to various ‘geodesigns’, figures, and models. First, a brief description of the main studies of spatial structure concerning the macroregion is given, then our definition of the spatial structure of Central and Eastern Europe is outlined.
The research is based not only on the main traditional development indicators (e.g. GDP per capita, unemployment rate, and economic density), but also takes into consideration the elements of Peter Nijkamp’s XXQ model (economy, livability, research and development, accessibility).
In our work, we attempt to measure the role of the elements of the XXQ model in a Central and Eastern European (CEE) context. We then examine the model using a partial least squares path analysis. The PLS path analysis approach is a novel tool within territorial research, especially if we focus on CEE. With the help of the method, we can make a regression model which can describe the effects of each element on the economic development of the involved states (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria). Central and Eastern Europe NUTS 3 regions are our territorial focus; however, being able to determine the appropriate territorial context and level is significant.

Tássia Germano de Oliveira, Gisleia Duarte (p), Raul Silveira Neto

Regional policies have been the main strategy of countries to reduce territorial inequalities. In general, heavily based on large investments in infrastructure, tax incentives and subsidies to capital and research and development, seek to foster productive activity in less developed regions. In Brazil, the Constitutional Financing Funds of the Northeast (FNE), the North (FNO) and the Midwest (FCO) are the main financing mechanisms of the Regional Policy in the country. Regardless of the importance of the theme, Brazil is still among the most unequal countries, where regional disparities continue for decades, despite public interventions. This paper aims to contribute to the literature by bringing new evidence on the effects of developing countries' regional policies. In particular, we explore a spatial discontinuity that delimits the area of eligibility of one of the main regional policy in Brazil , FNE. this paper evaluates the efficacy of Financing Constitutional Fund of the Northeast (FNE) loans using spacial descontinuity regression in municipality level. In relation to FNE, the results indicates a negative impact on informal sector employment and no impact on the growth rate of employee, during the period 2010-2015.

Marie Breuillé , Camille Grivault, Eliakim Kakpo, Julie Le Gallo (p)

The relationship between population and employment density and the costs of public services remains the subject of numerous controversies due to the wide range of estimated elasticities. This disparity derives essentially from measurement and identification sources. Based on a sample of French municipalities for the period 2003-2015, this paper addresses both considerations and provides further evidence in support of a non-linear relationship between the size of cities and public expenditures per capita. First, we measure density differently from the traditional literature and consider two metrics. Second, to tackle endogeneity concerns, we exploit historical records of population, settlements and soil characteristics in a municipality as an exogenous source of variation of current levels of density. Our preferred specifications imply -0.10 and 0.13 elasticities for per capita current and capital expenditures respectively.