Publication: Hub-Periphery Development Pattern and Inclusive Growth: Case Study of Guangdong Province
Loading...
Date
2015-12
ISSN
Published
2015-12
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The hub-periphery development pattern of the Guangdong economy, to some extent, is a miniature of that of the Chinese economy. The Pearl River Delta, drawing from its first-nature comparative advantages in factor endowments and proximity to Hong Kong SAR, China, and Macau SAR, China, and the second-nature advantages as first-movers in the reforms in attracting and retaining domestic and foreign resources, has developed into a regional economic center. This paper examines the pattern of inter- and intra-provincial migration and that of the concentration of production, to explore the challenges and opportunities for the success of “double transfer.” The paper suggests a four-prong approach, to improve the business environment, support the realization of latent comparative advantages, increase the skill level of the labor force to support the upgrade of the production structure, and protect the vulnerable, to support the inclusive growth of the economy in Guangdong in a sustainable manner.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Luo, Xubei; Zhu, Nong. 2015. Hub-Periphery Development Pattern and Inclusive Growth: Case Study of Guangdong Province. Policy Research Working Paper;No. 7509. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/23474 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Publication The Future of Poverty(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-15)Climate change is increasingly acknowledged as a critical issue with far-reaching socioeconomic implications that extend well beyond environmental concerns. Among the most pressing challenges is its impact on global poverty. This paper projects the potential impacts of unmitigated climate change on global poverty rates between 2023 and 2050. Building on a study that provided a detailed analysis of how temperature changes affect economic productivity, this paper integrates those findings with binned data from 217 countries, sourced from the World Bank’s Poverty and Inequality Platform. By simulating poverty rates and the number of poor under two climate change scenarios, the paper uncovers some alarming trends. One of the primary findings is that the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide could be nearly doubled due to climate change. In all scenarios, Sub-Saharan Africa is projected to bear the brunt, contributing the largest number of poor people, with estimates ranging between 40.5 million and 73.5 million by 2050. Another significant finding is the disproportionate impact of inequality on poverty. Even small increases in inequality can lead to substantial rises in poverty levels. For instance, if every country’s Gini coefficient increases by just 1 percent between 2022 and 2050, an additional 8.8 million people could be pushed below the international poverty line by 2050. In a more extreme scenario, where every country’s Gini coefficient increases by 10 percent between 2022 and 2050, the number of people falling into poverty could rise by an additional 148.8 million relative to the baseline scenario. These findings underscore the urgent need for comprehensive climate policies that not only mitigate environmental impacts but also address socioeconomic vulnerabilities.Publication Central Bank Independence and Sovereign Borrowing(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-25)This paper studies the impact of central bank independence on sovereign borrowing, using an index that captures institutional constraints on central bank lending to the government across 155 countries from 1972 to 2023. The findings show that tighter lending to the executive significantly reduces sovereign interest rates and raises the debt-to-gross domestic product ratio in developing countries. These effects reflect the executive’s improved ability to borrow at lower costs under greater central bank independence. The results are robust to multiple tests, but there are no significant effects in advanced economies. From a policy perspective, the results highlight the key role of independent central banks as catalysts for reducing governments’ borrowing costs and enhancing the government’s borrowing capacity.Publication Disentangling the Key Economic Channels through Which Infrastructure Affects Jobs(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)This paper takes stock of the literature on infrastructure and jobs published since the early 2000s, using a conceptual framework to identify the key channels through which different types of infrastructure impact jobs. Where relevant, it highlights the different approaches and findings in the cases of energy, digital, and transport infrastructure. Overall, the literature review provides strong evidence of infrastructure’s positive impact on employment, particularly for women. In the case of electricity, this impact arises from freeing time that would otherwise be spent on household tasks. Similarly, digital infrastructure, particularly mobile phone coverage, has demonstrated positive labor market effects, often driven by private sector investments rather than large public expenditures, which are typically required for other large-scale infrastructure projects. The evidence on structural transformation is also positive, with some notable exceptions, such as studies that find no significant impact on structural transformation in rural India in the cases of electricity and roads. Even with better market connections, remote areas may continue to lack economic opportunities, due to the absence of agglomeration economies and complementary inputs such as human capital. Accordingly, reducing transport costs alone may not be sufficient to drive economic transformation in rural areas. The spatial dimension of transformation is particularly relevant for transport, both internationally—by enhancing trade integration—and within countries, where economic development tends to drive firms and jobs toward urban centers, benefitting from economies scale and network effects. Turning to organizational transformation, evidence on skill bias in developing countries is more mixed than in developed countries and may vary considerably by context. Further research, especially on the possible reasons explaining the differences between developed and developing economies, is needed.Publication Crowding Out and Banking Crises(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-22)This paper studies the effect of government issuance on firm issuance during banking crises using transaction-level bond and loan data from 66 countries between 1991 and 2017. Governments rarely issue loans, preferring to issue in bond markets. In contrast, firms receive most of their financing from banks. During banking crises, as the supply of domestic loans decreases, firms switch to issuing bonds in domestic markets. The paper uses a novel instrument based on maturing debt to overcome the potential endogeneity of government issuance. The findings show that firms must compete with the government for funds in the domestic bond market and are crowded out from this market as a result. This happens not only in developing countries, but in advanced countries as well. The paper also shows that firms with the ability to tap international debt markets switch to these markets when crowding out occurs in domestic bond markets. Lastly, the paper shows that more developed domestic bond markets mitigate, but do not eliminate, the degree to which crowding out occurs.Publication Designing and Analyzing Powerful Experiments(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-07-22)This paper offers practical advice on how to improve statistical power in randomized experiments through choices and actions researchers can take at the design, implementation, and analysis stages. At the design stage, the choice of estimand, choice of treatment, and decisions that affect the residual variance and intra-cluster correlation can all affect power for a given sample size. At the implementation stage, researchers can boost power through increasing compliance with treatment, reducing attrition, and improving outcome measurement. At the analysis stage, power can be increased through using different test statistics or estimands, through the choice of control variables, and through incorporating informative priors in a Bayesian analysis. A key message is that it does not make sense to talk of “the” power of an experiment. A study can be well-powered for one outcome or estimand, but not others, and a fixed sample size can yield very different levels of power depending on researcher decisions.
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication The Impact of Remittances on Rural Poverty and Inequality in China(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-05)Large numbers of agricultural labor moved from the countryside to cities after the economic reforms in China. Migration and remittances play an important role in transforming the structure of rural household income. This paper examines the impact of rural-to-urban migration on rural poverty and inequality in the case of Hubei province using the data of a 2002 household survey. Since remittances are a potential substitute for farm income, the paper presents counterfactual scenarios of what rural income, poverty, and inequality would have been in the absence of migration. The results show that, by providing alternatives to households with lower marginal labor productivity in agriculture, migration leads to an increase in rural income. In contrast to many studies that suggest the increasing share of non-farm income in total income widens inequality, this paper offers support for the hypothesis that migration tends to have egalitarian effects on rural income for three reasons: (i) migration is rational self-selection - farmers with higher agricultural productivities choose to remain in local agricultural production while those with higher expected return in urban non-farm sectors migrate; (ii) poorer households facing binding constraints of land shortage are more likely to migrate; and (iii) the poorest poor benefit disproportionately from remittances.Publication Poverty and Regional Development in Eastern Europe and Central Asia(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2007)This paper is focused only on this objective: the alleviation of regional concentrations of poverty. There are several reasons. First, judging from the public documents of multilaterals and governments, poverty reduction is often the primary objective of regional development efforts in the ECA region. It is also the primary objective of the World Bank, the sponsor of this paper. Second, the environmental and social objectives of regional development are difficult to analyze through an economic lens. While some may argue that cities are too big, others argue that large cities are crucial to economic growth and merely need to be better managed. By the same token, the social costs of out-migration are difficult to weigh against the economic benefits of labor mobility. The analysis of the tradeoffs between the environmental and social objectives of regional development on one hand, and economic objectives of regional development on the other, is better done on a case-by-case basis than in a regional survey paper. This report is the first of a series of papers on regional issues in the ECA region.Publication Rising Income Inequality in China : A Race to the Top(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2008-08)Income inequality in China has risen rapidly in the past decades across regions, between rural and urban sectors, and within provinces. The dynamics of divergence across these sub-national areas have taken the form of a "race to the top" - meaning that all segments of the population, including the poor with low education in lagging inland rural areas, have experienced gains in average income. The largest gains have been registered by those with higher income and education in leading coastal urban areas. Using the China Economic, Population, Nutrition and Health Survey data of 1989 and 2004, we show that the most important factors explaining overall inequality are differential returns to schooling and sector of employment. A decomposition analysis based on household income determination shows that the increase in returns to education explains two-thirds of income changes in urban areas and one-sixth in rural areas. The widening income gaps are the consequence of higher growth in leading urban and coastal areas and that the skilled population has benefited more from the economic reforms carried out during the last 25 years. The authors argue that rising income inequality can be part of a normal process of development at a certain stage, and that the dynamics of spatial income divergence in the form of "a race to the top" can be desirable to some extent as it unleashes competitive pressure and creates incentives for investment in skills. Continuing to improve market efficiency and investing in people, in particular improving education service in lagging areas to poor people, are important for sustainable growth and equitable distribution in the long run.Publication Pakistan - Balochistan Economic Report : From Periphery to Core, Volume 1. Summary Report(Washington, DC, 2008-05)Balochistan offers some of the best assets for development. Balochistan is generously bestowed with natural and locational resources. It possesses the largest land area of any province of Pakistan, proving vast rangeland for goats, sheep, buffaloes, cattle, camels and other livestock. Its southern border makes up about two thirds of the national coastline, giving access to a large pool of fishery resources. As a frontier province, it is ideally situated for trade with Iran, Afghanistan, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf countries. Over the last four decades, it supplied cheap natural gas to Pakistan's economic centers, supporting the country's industrialization. This report offers an empirical analysis of provincial economic development and the ways in which the provincial and federal governments, supported by donors, can help to foster it. It is organized around three topics: the stock taking of economic outcomes over the last decades; the Strategies for inclusive economic development of generating growth, delivering services, and financing development in the future; and the instruments for today's economic policies to bring about the required changes. The five main findings of the report are as follows. First, there are good reasons to be optimistic about Balochistan's development. Provincial and federal reforms, the synergies between Balochistan's and Pakistan's development agenda in the areas of energy and trade, and the strong performance of the national economy present a unique opportunity to move Balochistan from the periphery to the core of economic development to the benefit of its people. Second, in order to overcome the challenges that held back provincial development for many decades, Balochistan should pursue a development agenda around generating growth, delivering services, and financing development. This approach can make sure that Balochistan's development path is inclusive, where the gains are shared across regions and population groups. Third, generating growth requires leveraging Balochistan's resource and locational advantages, deepening its capacity for value-addition, and strengthening the foundations for business activity. Fourth, delivering services depends on improving the public administration, making devolution more effective and scaling-up of basic services with innovative approaches involving the private sector and communities. Finally, financing development relies on a prudent management of provincial expenditures, strengthening the capacity for revenue collection, and advancing fiscal devolution.Publication Country Partnership Framework for Uzbekistan for the Period FY16-FY20(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-05-19)This Country Partnership Framework (CPF) covers the five-year period FY16-20. Anchored in the government’s medium-term development plan as outlined in a January 2015 Cabinet of Ministers Program of Action, it also reflects the analysis and recommendations of the World Bank Group’s (WBG) 2015 Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) for Uzbekistan and the lessons learned from the Completion Report of the previous CPS. The CPF’s objectives and program, which focus on developing the conditions for faster job creation, are consistent with the WBG’s twin goals of eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity. The Uzbekistan Systemic Country Diagnostic (SCD) identified ten priority areas that would need to be addressed to eliminate poverty, boost shared prosperity, and enable Uzbekistan to reach upper middle-income status. The government’s strategic objectives are for Uzbekistan to achieve upper middleincome status by 2030, implying income growth averaging 6 percent annually, and in particular to create 500,000 jobs annually. Building country systems for statistical, fiduciary, safeguard, and statistical capacity underlie the foundation of this CPF. The CPF program will remain flexible as circumstances change and new opportunities may arise.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Global Economic Prospects, January 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-01-16)Global growth is expected to hold steady at 2.7 percent in 2025-26. However, the global economy appears to be settling at a low growth rate that will be insufficient to foster sustained economic development—with the possibility of further headwinds from heightened policy uncertainty and adverse trade policy shifts, geopolitical tensions, persistent inflation, and climate-related natural disasters. Against this backdrop, emerging market and developing economies are set to enter the second quarter of the twenty-first century with per capita incomes on a trajectory that implies substantially slower catch-up toward advanced-economy living standards than they previously experienced. Without course corrections, most low-income countries are unlikely to graduate to middle-income status by the middle of the century. Policy action at both global and national levels is needed to foster a more favorable external environment, enhance macroeconomic stability, reduce structural constraints, address the effects of climate change, and thus accelerate long-term growth and development.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication The State of the Global Education Crisis(UNESCO, Paris, UNICEF, New York, and World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-12-10)Even before Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) hit, the world was already experiencing a learning crisis. 258 million primary- and secondary-school age children and youth were out of school. Many children who were in school were learning very little: 53 percent of all ten-year-old children in low- and middle-income countries were experiencing learning poverty, meaning that they were unable to read and understand a simple age-appropriate text at age 10. This report spotlights how COVID-19 has deepened the education crisis and charts a course for creating more resilient education systems for the future. Section one gives introduction. Section two documents COVID-19’s impacts on learning levels by presenting updated simulations and bringing together the latest documented evidence on learning loss from over 28 countries. Section three explores how the crisis has widened inequality and had greater impacts on already disadvantaged children and youth. Section four reviews evidence on learning recovery from past crises and highlights current policy responses that appear most likely to have succeeded in stemming learning losses, while recognizing that the evidence is still in a nascent stage. The final section discusses how to build on the investments made and the lessons learned during the pandemic to accelerate learning recovery and emerge from the crisis with increased education quality, resilience, and equity in the longer term.