Abstract

Previous research on urban polycentricity’s impact on economic growth yielded mixed results. This study re-evaluates the causal link between polycentricity and regional economic growth, considering various measures like productivity, employment, wages, and urban amenities. It addresses the common focus on explaining agglomeration externalities in previous analyses while emphasizing the importance of different measures capturing distinct urban-economic advantages. Using a fixed-effect model for China’s urban regions from 2005 to 2017, we find that the influence of polycentricity varies depending on the economic variables examined, which cast doubts on the conventional view that suggests a positive relationship between polycentricity and economic growth