Virtual Agglomeration and Urban Economic Resilience
In recent years,increased Sino-US trade frictions,geopolitical conflicts,and other external factors have notably raised the risks to China's economic stability.Addressing these complex domestic and global challenges has underscored the importance of enhancing urban economic resilience.The rapid advancement of new-generation information technology is reshaping traditional production models and methods of resource allocation,evolving geographic agglomeration into a new form:virtual agglomeration.Virtual agglomeration preserves the benefits of physical clustering but introduces unique advantages,such as efficient resource integration and enhanced knowledge spillovers.As a result,harnessing the virtual agglomeration platforms enabled by these technologies to reinforce urban economic stability and resilience has become a key priority for China to support high-quality economic development.To investigate this,we incorporate the spatial agglomeration spillover attenuation effect into constructing virtual agglomeration indicators,reflecting industrial digitalization.Using panel data from 285 Chinese prefecture-level cities and business registration data from 2013 to 2021,we empirically examine the impact,mechanisms,and constraints of virtual agglomeration on urban economic resilience.The main conclusions are as follows:(1)Virtual agglomeration significantly improves urban economic resilience by overcoming the spatial limitations of geographic spillovers,displaying a positive spatial spillover effect.(2)Heterogeneity analysis shows that while virtual agglomeration initially strengthens resilience,its effect weakens as it deepens,following a non-linear trend with diminishing positive marginal returns.This effect is more evident in non-central,eastern cities,and those with higher marketization.(3)Mechanism analysis identifies that enhancing the allocation efficiency of labor,capital,and technology is a crucial pathway by which virtual agglomeration influences urban economic resilience.Compared to prior research,this paper's marginal contributions are twofold.First,it expands studies on economic resilience and urban governance,offering practical insights for developing new strategies to enhance urban resilience and providing empirical evidence on virtual agglomeration as a means of improving urban risk governance in the digital economy era.Second,unlike studies that focus on virtual agglomeration's influence on regional innovation and export quality,this paper systematically examines the impact and mechanisms of virtual agglomeration,as a novel industrial organization form,on urban economic resilience.This approach further extends research on the economic outcomes of virtual agglomeration.This study underscores the potential of virtual agglomeration as a pathway to reinforce urban resilience,suggesting significant policy implications for fostering resilient cities.First,continued efforts are necessary to integrate new-generation information technology with the real economy,encouraging leading enterprises in the advanced manufacturing sector to establish industrial internet platforms.This integration can achieve efficient,large-scale resource optimization,improving the economic system's adaptive capacity to external shocks and enhancing urban economic resilience.Second,expanding the influence of virtual agglomeration in central and eastern cities,while promoting cross-city digital cooperation in less economically developed regions,can leverage the combined benefits of virtual and geographic clustering to diversify and strengthen local industries.Lastly,it is crucial to improve market-oriented allocation mechanisms,reducing barriers to resource mobility,promoting secure and organized flow of development factors,and fully utilizing the positive effects of virtual agglomeration on urban resilience.
万方数据
维普
