Peripheral Counties Research Articles

Why high-speed rail causes heterogeneous spatial patterns in firm innovation: Perspectives from intensive and extensive margins.

This study examines the impact of high-speed rail (HSR) on corporate innovation in China, analyzing county-level patent applications. Utilizing difference-in-differences regression, we break down the overall impact of HSR connectivity on innovation into two categories: extensive margins, where a greater number of firms become innovative, and intensive margins, where individual firms increase their level of innovation. HSR access has increased patent applications, particularly in manufacturing and non-high-tech services, affecting both margins. However, in high-tech services, the impact is significant only on the extensive margin. Effects vary between urban areas and peripheral counties, with knowledge spillovers and brain drain as key predictors.

Remote high-speed rail stations, urban land supply, and the emergence of new economic activities

This study investigates the influence of high-speed rail (HSR) station placements on urban economic activities within cities. Specifically, we assess their effects on government-driven new land supply and market-driven emerging economic activities. Using data from 2007 to 2017, our analysis encompasses 720 HSR stations across 319 Chinese cities, with a focus on remote stations situated in the peripheral counties. Our findings reveal that remote HSR stations typically function as new city subcenters. They consistently drive the expansion of both land supply and economic activities (distance effect) and draw them toward the quadrant surrounding the station (direction effect). However, the alignment between their impacts on land supply and economic activities varies based on the city characteristics. In cities experiencing population declines, remote HSR stations notably affect land supply but have a negligible influence on economic activities, leading to resource misallocation and an increased risk of ghost towns. Furthermore, better HSR accessibility and higher tertiary industry proportions can magnify the spatial spillover effects of HSR station location on both land supply and economic activities.

Expressways and policy choices of local governments

We examine how intercity road connection affects the policy choices of local governments, using the construction of China’s national expressway as a natural experiment. We show that peripheral counties reduced the level of spending and changed the spending composition since the expressway connection. They became less involved in spending competition, increased the effective tax rate on private firms, and slowed down the privatization of state-owned firms. These results are consistent with the view that mobile capital tends to relocate from peripheral areas to core regions with a lower trade cost. We further show that such changes in government policies contribute significantly to the output decline in these regions after the expressway connection.

Sorting paper: The archival labour of digitising land records in Kenya

AbstractNairobi's land digitisation programme presents continuous challenges to the Kenyan state's aspirations of reforming land administration. By drawing upon insights from archival sciences and digital geographies, this paper argues that digitisation of Kenya's land administration records presents us with an opportunity to pay attention to how information flows from paper to digital systems, and the nature of human condition that makes it possible. Based on research of land digitisation initiatives in Nairobi and its peripheral counties, this paper explores first, how digitisation initiates a large‐scale state exercise of sorting paper in the land records departments that constitutes the archival apparatus of the state; and second, how the archival labour of state officials in this process is at the same time significant, invisible and devalued. Through interviews of state officials in county and state departments, we argue that the digitisation process is far more complex and messier than the rhetoric of seamless transition to automated land administration in Kenya. Digitisation involves a slow embodied labour in sorting paper by state officials who have little power in shaping the design of the platform that they are expected to use. The devaluation of the archival labour of state officials who are not professionally trained in ‘archival practice’ and are seemingly voiceless in the production of national land information platforms leads to subversion and non‐cooperation with the platform itself. The paper concludes that an expansive lens of seeing digital platforms through the tools and technologies of archiving practices enables us to understand why platforms fail, why and how paper increases value within digital systems and how archival labour is central to the politics of digitisation and platformisation in the future.

Does Proximity to Expressways Improve Manufacturing Productivity? Evidence from Chinese Firms

By matching the geocoded data of firm-level productivity and county-level expressway networks in China’s Yangtze River Delta region, we establish a difference-in-differences model to investigate the impact of expressways on manufacturing firm productivity. The results show that expressways boost manufacturing firms’ total factor productivity, with firms closer to expressway services achieving more significant productivity increases compared to those farther away. The results remain robust after controlling for the endogeneity problem using an instrumental variable approach. Expressways promote firm productivity by reducing inventory costs and increasing firm profitability and regional industrial concentration, whereas their effect on product innovation is insignificant. We also find heterogeneity in the impact of expressways on firm productivity, with firms in peripheral counties and in labor-intensive industries receiving a weak productivity-enhancing effect, while firms in central regions and those with high transport dependency benefit more.

Evaluation of County Economic Resilience in Henan Province Based on the Entropy Weight-Normal Cloud Model

As new urbanization constantly develops, the county economy plays a vital role between country and city, and high economic resilience is necessary to support and safeguard for smooth functioning of the county development. The paper constructs the index system of county economic resilience in Henan Province from three dimensions: risk resistance ability, self-stability, and sustainable development ability, and to empirically analyze the economic resilience of 104 counties and cities in the province from 2013 to 2020 using the entropy weight-normal cloud model. The results show that Henan counties’ economic resilience increases slowly over time and decreases spatially from the center to the surrounding region, with Zhengzhou as the main center and Luoyang and Sanmenxia as the subcenter; risk resistance ability and self-stabilization are more influential than the sustainable development ability; the key indicators affecting economic resilience are GDP per capita, retail sales of social consumer goods per capita, financial self-sufficiency rate, education expenditure per capita, and population mobility. Therefore, the counties in Henan should find the right positioning to improve economic resilience; central cities such as Zhengzhou and Luoyang should play their strong functions, while strengthening support for peripheral counties.

Spatiotemporal evolution for early warning of ecological carrying capacity during the urbanization process in the Dongting Lake area, China

Early warning of ecological carrying capacity (ECC) is essential for the urbanization process. It provides information on the deterioration of the urban ecological environment and potential hazards and promotes sustainable development. However, research on early warning of ECC in the urbanization process has been limited and mainly focused on a single aspect of ECC, a comprehensive early warning system based on the three perspectives of ecological elasticity (EE), resource carrying (RC), and environmental carrying (EC) is still lacking. Additionally, previous studies did not effectively predict the future evolution trends of ECC and failed to reveal the spatiotemporal evolution characteristics. To address these shortcomings, in this study, we propose a comprehensive early warning indicator of ECC incorporating EE, RC, and EC. The state space technique and back-propagation (BP) neural network model were applied to analyze the spatiotemporal evolution of the warning state in the Dongting Lake area. The results showed that the ECC index decreased from 0.5383 to 0.5364 in 2001–2020, and the risk status was in the range of medium risk. This result was consistent with an analysis of the three subsystems, which indicated that urbanization exceeded the ECC. The early warning index of ECC is predicted to be 0.6257 in 2025. The risk status is predicted to be low risk. From 2001 to 2020, the risk status of counties were significantly different. Most counties in the central area had a low-risk status, and peripheral counties had a medium-risk status. The counties with the most serious risk status were mostly distributed along the edge of the area, in places with higher urbanization rates. Neither the spatial pattern nor the risk status is predicted to change substantially before 2025. Therefore, some targeted measures should be taken to improve the ECC and mitigate the risk.

Spatial Diffusion of E-Commerce in China’s Counties: Based on the Perspective of Regional Inequality

In recent decades, China has been on a new journey toward a digital economy of which e-commerce accounts for a substantial proportion. Despite some controversy, the innovation diffusion hypothesis and efficiency hypothesis of online shopping have been tested in research on the urban–rural dual structure. However, research on the spatial diffusion model of online business is sparse. Based on the online business and online shopping index released by the Ali Research Institute, this article compares the spatial diffusion model of online shopping and online business in the core–periphery structure based on the inequality between the eastern and western regions of China. Our study suggests that online business trends are in line only with the innovation diffusion hypothesis, with marginal counties having lower levels of online business. Online shopping, on the other hand, is in line with the innovation diffusion hypothesis and partially with the efficiency hypothesis, with a higher index of online shopping in the core regions and some peripheral counties. The discrepancy in the spatial diffusion mode is due to the differences in aims and supporting elements between online business and online shopping. Apart from infrastructure, the diffusion of online business is largely constrained by the regional industrial base, while online shopping is influenced by income and savings levels, which is the main reason for the differences in the spatial diffusion of online business and online shopping. We argue that the diffusion of online business has not led to the ability to balance regional inequalities at the national scale, while online shopping has the potential to bridge core and peripheral disparities better than online businesses, not in terms of the ability to bridge economic disparities, but in terms of the potential to reduce spatial consumption inequalities and welfare gains.

The Politics of Social Protection in Kenya: State Capacity, Political Competition and Social Pension Registration in Marsabit County

In 2017, the government of Kenya extended its provision of social assistance to the elderly through the transformation of the older persons cash transfer into a social pension which provides cash transfer to those aged 70 plus. This paper examines the process of beneficiary registration for the nationwide social pension, with an explicit focus on registration in Marsabit County in Northern Kenya. Engaging with the statein-society framework, which emphasises the relational nature of state power and state capacity in registering beneficiaries, the paper explores the challenges and possibilities of registration of a nominal ‘universal’ pension in a marginal and peripheral county with limited state infrastructure. Pressure from the national government to register potential beneficiaries with little facilitation within one month preceding the highly contested 2017 national election forced local government officials in peripheral counties like Marsabit to work within the challenges and constraints of the social development office to register beneficiaries. We argue that the state prioritised the visibility of the registration process prior to a contentious election. In doing so, the registration was more successful in achieving visibility than universality in the registration process. Limited resources and weak state reach limited the state’s ability to register all eligible beneficiaries in the vast pastoral county of Marsabit. The process of registration relied heavily on local leaders, including chiefs, clan elders and clan leaders, to overcome human resource constraints, potentially throwing into question the transparency of the process. To make this argument, we examine the social pension registration process in 2017 in Marsabit County. We utilise qualitative data collected across six months in 2018, including key informant interviews and focus group discussions with government officials, community leaders, politicians and beneficiaries. In making this argument, we engage with ongoing debates on universal versus targeting social protection programmes, highlighting the challenges of registration in a peripheral county in Kenya, with a high percentage of pastoral populations.

THE DEGREE OF DEVELOPMENT SUSTAINABILITY AT A LOCAL LEVEL: EVIDENCE FROM MAZOVIAN COUNTIES IN POLAND

he aim of this study was to determine the sustainability degree of local development for counties of the Mazowieckie (Mazovian) Voivodship in the years 2006-2015. Research was conducted on a population of 42 counties (territorial units at NUTS 4 level), including 5 town counties (towns possessing county status) and 37 land counties. Basing on data from the Local Data Bank of the Central Statistical Office, three dimensions of development were investigated: economic, social and ecological (environmental). The author’s conceptual approach, incorporating dimensional indexes of development and Euclidean distance analysis, was applied to capture the interactions between and balance across the three pillars of sustainability. Through the results of the study, it is observed that the highest degree of local development sustainability was achieved by counties located up to 50 kilometres from Poland’s capital city Warsaw (i.e. grodziski, grójecki, nowodworski, otwocki, sochaczewski, wołomiński and żyrardowski), while the lowest by towns with a county status (Ostrołęka, Płock and Warsaw) and by peripheral counties of the east and south part of the Mazovian Voivodship (siedlecki, przysuski, lipski and zwoleński). In the 2015 ranking, according to the sustainability degree of counties, the first three spots were taken by ciechanowski, przasnyski and sochaczewski counties. The following town counties took the last three positions: Ostrołęka, Płock and Warsaw.

‘It has almost been an underground movement’. The Development of Grassroots Football in Regional Ireland: the Case of the Donegal League, 1971–1996

This article assesses the development of association football at grassroots’ level in County Donegal, a peripheral county lying in the north-west of the Republic of Ireland. Despite the foundation of the County Donegal Football Association in 1894, soccer organisers there were unable to develop a permanent competitive structure for the game until the late 20th century and the more ambitious teams were generally forced to affiliate with leagues in nearby Derry city. In discussing the reasons for this lack of a regular structure, this paper will also focus on the success of the Donegal League, founded in 1971, in providing a season long calendar of games. It also looks at soccer administrators’ rivalry with those of Gaelic football there, and the impact of the nationalist Gaelic Athletic Association’s ‘ban’ on its members taking part in what the organisation termed ‘foreign games’. In particular, the extent to which the removal of the ‘ban’ in 1971 helped to ease co operation between organisers of Gaelic and Association football will be explored.

Diversity or Segregation? A Multi-decadal Spatial Analysis of Demographics of Atlanta Neighborhoods

The City of Atlanta has seen phenomenal urban expansion, racial re-composition, and migration patterns over decades. In this paper, we try to answer overarching question: Has the economic development and urban sprawl in Atlanta been accompanied by racially diverse neighborhoods? Or has the economic development in Atlanta led to a racially integrated landscape? We use demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Panel Study for Income Dynamics. First, we use hotspot analysis to study temporal changes in spatial patterns of concentration of the black population in Atlanta. Second, using the index of dissimilarity (D) and interaction index (I), we estimate the extent of segregation between whites and blacks. Third, we calculate the migration effectiveness in three sub-regions of Atlanta. The results show that hotspots of the black population are located in the central and south-central parts of Atlanta, and have expanded predominantly in the eastern and southern directions during the last four decades. Racial diversity has increased generally in the counties immediately north of the city proper, but the southern and peripheral counties had less racial diversity. Remarkably, southern Atlanta did not witness the economic development in the same way as northern Atlanta. The migration effectiveness index shows that, in recent years, Atlanta suburbs attracted more migrants, both from within the Atlanta region and from the rest of the United States, as compared to the Atlanta city proper. In recent decades, neighborhoods in the Suburb-I becoming racially more diverse, and one would expect this trend will extend in other regions too in the future.

‘No county left behind?’ The distributional impact of high-speed rail upgrades in China

Infrastructure investment may reshape economic activities. In this article, I examine the distributional impacts of high-speed rail upgrades in China, which have improved passengers’ access to high-speed train services in the city nodes but have left the peripheral counties along the upgraded railway lines bypassed by the services. By exploiting the quasi-experimental variation in whether counties were affected by this project, my analysis suggests that the affected counties on the upgraded railway lines experienced reductions in GDP and GDP per capita following the upgrade, which was largely driven by the concurrent drop in fixed asset investments. This article provides the first empirical evidence on how transportation costs of people affect urban peripheral patterns.

Irish-born players in England's Football Leagues, 1945–2010: an historical and geographical assessment

Studies on the places of origin of Irish footballing migrants have been scarce. During the period from 1945 to 2010, 500 Republic of Ireland-born footballers and 417 players born in Northern Ireland played league football in England. This article will illustrate that while the majority of Irish footballers who migrated to England in this period were born in Dublin and Belfast, there were a number of reasons why rates of production were significantly lower outside these cities. The lack of street football in more rural areas, the role of schools, the slow establishment of local leagues and strong competition from other football codes help explain this disparity. An outline of scouting networks across Ireland will be given and the recent emergence of players from more peripheral regions will also be discussed. It will determine which English clubs were initially favoured by these players and the most significant Irish source clubs will be identified. Using interviews conducted with players and biographical information gathered, an assessment of their schoolboy-playing experiences will be offered while the migration of young players from more peripheral counties to clubs on the east coast of Ireland will also be examined.

Trade Integration, Market Size, and Industrialization: Evidence from China's National Trunk Highway System

Large-scale transport infrastructure investments connect both large metropolitan centres of production as well as small peripheral regions. Are the resulting trade cost reductions a force for the diffusion of industrial and total economic activity to peripheral regions, or do they reinforce the concentration of production in space? This article exploits China's National Trunk Highway System as a large-scale natural experiment to contribute to our understanding of this question. The network was designed to connect provincial capitals and cities with an urban population above 500,000. As a side effect, a large number of small peripheral counties were connected to large metropolitan agglomerations. To address non-random route placements on the way between targeted city nodes, I propose an instrumental variable strategy based on the construction of least cost path spanning tree networks. The estimation results suggest that network connections have led to a reduction in GDP growth among non-targeted peripheral counties. This effect appears to be driven by a significant reduction in industrial output growth. Additional results present evidence in support of a trade-based channel in the light of falling trade costs between peripheral and metropolitan regions.

The Role of Egyptian Exhibitions in the Development of Commercial Relations between Egypt and African Countries

Principal Objectives: objective of this study is to detect the relation between Exhibitions and the development of commercial relations between Egypt and African countries during the study period 1998-2009. The Case Study: COMESA - the Common Market of Eastern and Southern Africa is the case study. following 19 countries are members of COMESA: Burundi, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. COMESA was formed in 1994, replacing the Preferential Trade Area that had been in place since the early 80s. Together, these countries have a combined population of about 450 million people and a combined gross domestic product of about USD560 Billion, constituting a huge market for investment, with the highest rate of return on investment in the world. Hypothesis: (1) growth in Exhibitions activity can be largely attributed to their central role in economic restructuring. (2) There is a strong concentration of Exhibitions activity in the economically leading countries and their major urban agglomeration with backward and peripheral counties and regions scuffing severe disadvantages due to the lack of Exhibitions activity. (3) distribution of Exhibitions activity is correlated with the; economic strength; industrial production; innovativeness of countries and regions, as well as size; and accessibility of urban areas and agglomerations. (4) spatial range of Exhibitions activity has increased considerably over the time. Key Questions That Have Been Determined for This Study: (5) What is the concept of trade Exhibitions? (6) What are the approaches for the trade exhibitions classification? (7) What are the developmental dimensions of trade exhibitions? (8) What are the determinants of the exhibitions intensity in and out the Political Boundaries of countries? (9) What is the state of the Egyptian commercial relations with both of Africa and COMESA during the period 1998-2009? (10) And, what is the expected role of exhibitions in the development of commercial relations between Egypt and African countries? Thesis Structure: To achieve the above mentioned target, the study is divided into three chapters, the first entitled Development of the exhibitions Industry in Egypt Since 1980. second chapter entitled The Distribution and the determinants of the Egyptian exhibitions intensity in Africa: Case study is COMESA since 1998. And third chapter entitled The relationship between the Egyptian exhibitions and the development of commercial relations with Africa: Case study is COMESA since 1998. Methodology: study obtaining its main data from the General Organization for International Exhibitions and Fairs, the General Organization for Conventions Centers, relevant bodies of fairs and foreign trade in the African Countries, Global Association of the Exhibition Industry (UFI), International Exhibitions Bureau, Exhibition and Event Association of Southern Africa, United Nations statistics, Economic Commission for Africa, Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, COMESA Secretariat, International Trade Point, and the Ministry of Trade and Industry of Egypt.

Village pubs as a social propellant in rural areas: an econometric study

There is no place like England to witness the role of pubs as a social networking hotspot. Social networks lie at the foundations of most of the social and economic interactions of individuals. The aim of this paper is to assess the importance of pubs as natural locations for the development of social networks and how their presence affects the socio-economic activity of a given area or region. The econometric analysis conducted on rural parishes in Cumbria, a peripheral county in Northern England, reveals that village pubs have a positive influence on the socio-economic activity of local communities.

Med åpent blikk utenfor egen institusjon

ENGLISH SUMMARYHoff G. With an open view outside one's own institution. Nor J Epidemiol 2001; 11 (2): 133-135.Even in a country like Norway, with a poor reputation for investment in medical research, some studiesmay materialise against all odds. This is the story about the difficult start and first few years of flexiblesigmoidoscopy screening studies in Norway. It started in the peripheral county of Telemark with theTelemark Polyp Study no. I (TPS-I) in 1983. We now see the success of the Norwegian ColorectalCancer Prevention (NORCCAP) study, which is an on-going large-scale version of the TPS-I studycomprising 21,000 men and women to be offered flexible sigmoidoscopy screening in Oslo andTelemark after randomised invitation from the population registry.

Is NSAP A Myth In Today's World? Laparoscopy As A Diagnostic Tool In The Diagnosis Of (Nsap) Nonspecific Abdominal Pain: A Peripheral County Hospital Experience

Is NSAP A Myth In Today's World? Laparoscopy As A Diagnostic Tool In The Diagnosis Of (Nsap) Nonspecific Abdominal Pain: A Peripheral County Hospital Experience

Population dynamics of cities and counties and urbanization in the Tokai area during the Meiji and Taisho periods

The main purpose of this article is to analyze the process of demographic urbanization during the Meiji and Taisho periods in the Tokai area, central Japan, using Kokoh-Chosa, the population statistics which were available before modern censuses began. The study period covers the years 1885-1920. In those times, Japan experienced a rapid population increase and an important urbanization process never seen before. The reason for these changes is attributed to modernization, and many researchers have been interested in such vicissitudes.Although population changes in modern times have been considered to be as a result of a demographic transition, some historical demographers in Japan argue that this started around 1920. They insist that the beginnings of population increase trends were derived not from decreasing mortality but from upward fertility trends, so that the demographic transition occurred much later than the start of population growth trends. Moreover, in such processes there seemed to be some differences between cities and peripheral areas, and such regional differences are associated with urbanization processes.Geographers have attempted to portray the processes of urbanization in those times in terms of social and economic indices. However, only a few studies have focused on the processes of Japanese demographic urbanization since Kokoh-Chosa possesses some significant problems as discussed below. In this paper, the problems of Kokoh-Chosa will first be made clear, and then there will be an attempt to adjust the data. Kokoh-Chosa gives us demographic information over 50 years before modern censuses, and it includes much valuable data, such as the numbers of births and deaths in all cities and counties. Thus, by adjusting the data and then using it, discussions on the processes of demographic urbanization become very fruitful.The most serious problem of Kokoh-Chosa was that the population was overestimated, especially in city areas, and that this accumulated from year to year. This problem resulted from the population registration system of those days which was defective due to its complexity. While the population of Kokoh-Chosa was overestimated, this problem was recognized in those days and thus the excess population was sometimes removed. That kind of process was referred to as Kiryu-Seiri. As a result, there were sometimes some sudden gaps in the population data series. The author solves the problem of Kiryu-seiri by calculating the excess population.Using the adjusted data, the author firstly analyzes the changes in crude birth rates and death rates in cities and counties. This has much to do with the discussion about demographic transition processes. Secondly, urbanization processes are analyzed by means of several maps showing the population change every five years. In particular, the author separates total population growth into its natural and social components, and discusses the geographical differences in population dynamics.The results of the discussions are summarized as follows.Population increases, which may cause demographic urbanization, were due to high fertility, mainly in county areas. On the other hand, there are few changes in mortality trends in the study period with a few exceptions such as the mortality crisis in 1918. Birth rates were higher than death rates at almost all times in all regions, but natural increase rates in cities were lower than those in county areas. Thus, we can say that demographic urbanization was due to many migrants from counties to cities.In the late 19th century, demographic urbanization had already appeared, but the net-migrants were mainly seen in the cities and their neighbors, while there were very few net-migrants in peripheral counties. Since the 20th century