Do polycentric urban regions promote functional spillovers and economic performance? Evidence from China

ABSTRACT

Although the literature often suggests that the economic prowess of ‘polycentric urban regions’ partly results from the ability of their constituent cities to promote functional spillovers through ‘borrowed size’, the empirical evidence remains scarce. This paper finds that polycentricity boosts the positive functional spillovers of producer service sector of city clusters beyond their boundaries only when city clusters have larger population and better urban infrastructure connectivity. And consequently, functional spillovers increase urban labour productivity. The labour division among cities could be the essential mechanism for the linkage between polycentricity and regional functional spillovers.

KEYWORDS:

• polycentric urban regions
• functional spillovers
• labour productivity
• borrowed size
• labour division
• producer service sector

JEL:

• O18
• R12

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 17ZDA068]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 42001183]; and the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of the Ministry of Education of China [grant number 20YJCZH233].