Polycentric spatial structure and its economic performance: evidence from meta-analysis

ABSTRACT

Although there seems to be a widely shared expectation that polycentricity increases economic competitiveness, the empirical findings are inconsistent. As the first meta-analysis, this paper examines whether emerging empirical evidence provides an insight into the polycentricity–productivity effect. Based on 139 estimates, we find no compelling evidence to support that polycentricity is either beneficial or detrimental for economic development. Further meta-logit regressions show that the measurement of polycentricity and the control of agglomeration economies indeed affect the polycentricity–productivity effect. In contrast, measuring polycentricity from different perspectives and the potential endogeneity do not appear to significantly influence this effect.

KEYWORDS:

• spatial structure
• polycentricity
• economic performance
• meta-analysis

JEL:

• O1
• O2
• R1

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Five studies did not have keywords, and we extracted these terms from the titles and abstracts of these studies. Specifically, the keywords extracted for Meijers (2008) were polycentric urban region, provision of amenities, monocentricity and Dutch region; the keywords extracted for Meijers and Burger (2010) were spatial structure, productivity, agglomeration, monocentricity, polycentricity and US metropolitan area; the keywords extracted for Veneri and Burgalassi (2012) were polycentric development, functional and morphological polycentricity, economic performance, and Italian NUTS-2 region; the keywords extracted for Brezzi and Veneri (2015) were polycentric urban system, economic implication, polycentricity, spatial scale and OECD countries; and the keywords extracted for Ouwehand (2018) were polycentricity, spatial organization, productivity, polycentric city networks and European TL2 region.

 

Additional information

Funding

This work is supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant numbers 41901184 and 42071210]; the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation [grant numbers 2019M650080 and 2020T130194]; the Major Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 17ZDA068]; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 2019ECNU-HWFW002]; and the Key Scientific Research Program of Higher Education Institutions in Henan Province [grant number 22A170006].