The urbanization process and economic growth: The so-what question
The urbanization process and economic growth: The so-what question
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DOI：
10.1023/a:1022860800744
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发表时间：
2003-03-01
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
Henderson, V
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Henderson, V
有大量关于城市化进程的文献着眼于城市化和城市集中度，询问是否以及何时存在城市化不足或过度、城市集中度不足或过度的问题。作者认为，国家政府政策和非民主机构促进了过度集中——一个国家的城市人口集中在一两个主要大都市区的程度——但在实施移民限制的前计划经济体中除外。这些文献假设存在最优城市化水平或最优城市集中度，但迄今为止还没有研究定量检验这一假设并提出基本的“那又怎样”的问题——显着偏离任何最优城市集中度或城市化率所造成的经济损失有多大？本文表明：(1) 就生产率增长最大化而言，存在最佳的城市集中度；(2) 该最佳程度随发展水平和国家规模而变化；(3) 就生产率增长而言，过度或不足的集中度可能会付出高昂的代价。该论文还表明，生产率增长并没有受到城市化本身的强烈影响。快速城市化往往是在几十年来经济低增长或负增长的情况下发生的。此外，城市化是一种暂时现象，许多国家现已完全城市化。
There is an extensive literature on the urbanization process looking at both urbanization and urban concentration, asking whether and when there is under or over-urbanization or under or over urban concentration. Writers argue that national government policies and non-democratic institutions promote excessive concentration-the extent to which the urban population of a country is concentrated in one or two major metropolitan areas-except in former planned economies where migration restrictions are enforced. These literatures assume that there is an optimal level of urbanization or an optimal level of urban concentration, but no research to date has quantitatively examined the assumption and asked the basic "so-what" question-how great are the economic losses from significant deviations from any optimal degrees of urban concentration or rates of urbanization? This paper shows that (1) there is a best degree of urban concentration, in terms of maximizing productivity growth (2) that best degree varies with the level of development and country size, and (3) over or under-concentration can be very costly in terms of productivity growth. The paper shows also that productivity growth is not strongly affected by urbanization per se. Rapid urbanization has often occurred in the face of low or negative economic growth over some decades. Moreover, urbanization is a transitory phenomenon where many countries are now fully urbanized.