Open Access
Since the reform and opening up, China's urbanization has developed rapidly Behind the rapid urbanization is the imbalance and insufficiency of urban development From the perspective of social and cultural diversity, this paper explores the impact of the diversity of dialect types on urban scale The diversity of dialects leads to the division of trust, hinders the cross regional flow of factors, affects the agglomeration effect of factors, and then affects the expansion of urban scale Using the diversity index of regional dialect types and 2016 nppviirs urban night light index, this paper empirically studies the impact of dialect diversity on urban scale The measurement results show that: Dialect diversity has a significant negative impact on urban scale On average, the addition of one dialect category will lead to a 4.5% decline in the size of the city measured by the night light index 55%. A series of robustness tests and causal identification show that the estimation result in this paper is the causal relationship of robustnessfurther empirical research shows that dialect diversity mainly affects the expansion of urban scale by hindering the flow and agglomeration of labor, capital and technological factorsthe Enlightenment of this study: To build a diversified and inclusive modern city, we need to weigh the costs and benefits of cultural diversity and unity, break cultural barriers, eliminate cultural prejudices, improve social trust, and give full play to the complementary effects brought by multiculturalism
Open Access
Based on the data samples of 276 cities at prefecture level and above in China from 2000 to 2012, using dialect diversity as a proxy to measure cultural diversity, using random effect model, system generalized moment estimation, two-stage least square method and other methods, this paper conducted an empirical investigation on the impact of cultural diversity on China's urbanization for the first time. It is found that dialect diversity has a significant negative impact on urbanization rate; considering the possibility of missing variables, the influence of dialect diversity on urbanization rate is still significantly negative; after using the historical immigration as the instrumental variable of dialect diversity, this negative influence still exists, but the degree of influence has decreased. Therefore, the cultural variables represented by dialects are an important factor affecting the process of urbanization.
Open Access
Measuring the occupational diversity and trend of Chinese cities from the perspective of the distribution of urban occupational types, and discussing the impact of urban characteristics on urban occupational diversity can provide reference for guiding urban full and high-quality employment. By using the improved Herfindahl index, panel data fixed effect model and Oaxaca blinder decomposition, it is found that the occupational diversity in Chinese cities showed a trend of first decreasing and then increasing from 2002 to 2016, which was due to the adjustment of urban industrial structure and the emergence of new economy after the financial crisis; at the same time, the larger the city, the higher the administrative level and the more developed the economy, the higher the degree of occupational diversity. The conclusion of the study is helpful to intuitively understand the occupational distribution, industrial structure and division of labor in different cities, evaluate the human resource structure and economic development potential of cities, and then provide policy suggestions for different cities to formulate industrial development and human resource planning.
Open Access
From the perspective of cross regional flow of human capital, this paper studies the impact and mechanism of foreign human capital on urban innovation in China, and reveals the innovation effect of foreign human capital. The theoretical research shows that the efficient allocation of innovation elements brought by foreign human capital and the diversified externalities associated with it are the source for cities to maintain innovation vitality and competitiveness. The empirical study matching the individual micro data of Chinese census with the urban patent data found that foreign human capital has a significant role in promoting urban innovation, especially in the innovation of invention patents with the highest technological content. Further research on the mechanism reveals that the externality of cultural diversity brought by foreign human capital is an important channel to promote urban innovation. Therefore, the absorption and integration of foreign labor is the key to the city full of innovation and vitality.
Open Access
China, as a transitional economy, faces a high level of market segmentation among administrative regions, which lowers the efficiency of resource allocation and the total factor productivity (TFP) rate. The literature has focused on the negative effects of local protectionism and administrative division on the formation of market integration in the economic growth process. However, considering that administrative districts such as prefectures usually overlap with cultural regions in China, the effects of local protectionism and administrative division on market segmentation may be overestimated because cultural diversity may also be negatively related to market integration. More importantly, diversity of dialect tends to increase the cost of communication, making it a barrier to labor migration and decreasing the level of generalized trustamong people. As a result, it may have adverse effects on the market integration process.