中国省域人口空间结构特征及其对经济绩效的影响——基于实体城市的空间识别

基于LandScan全球人口和ESA全球土地利用数据，构建2000—2015年中国省域人口空间结构数据库，刻画省域人口空间结构的时空格局，进而运用面板固定效应法、两阶段最小二乘法和差分GMM法探索空间结构对省域经济绩效的影响及这种影响对不同规模省域的差异，最后从省会城市集聚（不）经济的角度分析其内在机制。结果发现：① 2000—2015年，中国所有省会城市的人口规模都得到了显著增加，省域人口空间结构存在单中心化的演变趋势，且中西部地区省域人口空间结构相对偏单中心化；② 对所有省份尤其是人口规模相对较小的省份而言，人口空间结构单中心化倾向于提高省域经济效率，而对人口规模相对大的省份，人口空间结构单中心化很可能不利于省域经济效率的提高；③ 省会城市自身已经初显集聚不经济的迹象。

Characteristics and Impact of Population Spatial Structure on Economic Performance in China Based on Spatial Identification of Physical Cities

Based on the global population data from LandScan and land use data released by the European Space Agency, this paper identifies physical urban areas and extracts their populations. On this basis, we constructed a database of the population’s spatial structure of China’s provinces for 2000-2015 and analyzed the spatial and temporal patterns of provincial population spatial structure. Further, this paper uses fixed panel, two-stage least square method and difference GMM method to investigate the effect of population spatial structure on provincial economic performance, and how this effect varies across different sizes. We also probe the underlying mechanisms from the perspective of the agglomeration (dis) economy of the provincial capital. The following findings were reached. First, during the period 2000-2015, the population size of all provincial capitals in China has increased significantly. In terms of the spatial structure index, the temporal evolution of China’s provincial population spatial structure is relatively modest, with a tendency towards monocentricity; in the central and western regions, the provincial population spatial structure is relatively monocentric, while in the eastern coastal regions the population spatial structure tends to be polycentric. Second, for all provinces, especially those with relatively small populations, a monocentric population spatial structure facilitates economic efficiency throughout the province. Third, judging from the economic development of the provincial capital cities themselves, China’s capital cities have entered the stage of agglomeration diseconomy, while considering the economic development of the whole province, the provincial capital cities have a clear boosting effect.