Title:
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Infrastructure, knowledge creation, knowledge spillovers and economic growth in China
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The New Economic Geography [NEG] considers, within the context of economic development, what
are known as forces of agglomeration and forces of dispersion. This thesis considers the latter has deagglomeration
economies between regions. Agglomeration economies necessarily result from
increasing returns to scale. However, how these arise is very much a black box. It is the contention of
this thesis that agglomeration economies arise directly as a result of concentrated infrastructure
investment .For example, a concentrated investment in infrastructure in the SEZ's[manufacturing] and
NHTIDZ's[knowledge ] of the coastal regions of China has led to the Coastal regions prosperity and
the expense of the interior regions. On the other hand, de-agglomeration economies arise from
knowledge spillovers, but the NEG gives no analysis of the impact of knowledge creation.
When knowledge spillovers and knowledge creation are greater in one region of a country compared to
another, then the forces of de-agglomeration are stronger between a country's regions; and only serve
to increase disparities in income between these regions. This effect is enhanced if the forces of
agglomeration in one region of a country are greater, through enhanced infrastructure investment, than
in any other region.
This thesis has analysed the impact of government policy on infrastructure, knowledge spillovers;
and knowledge creation on China's economic growth since 1949.The analysis has evaluated how the
forces of agglomeration and de-agglomeration have impacted on China's economic development. In
the light of this analysis, the fundamental reasons for the deepening disparities in income between
China's regions has been laid bare, the IKSC [Infrastructure, Knowledge, Spillover, Creation]
framework has been developed to evaluate a country's economic development.
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