IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jecgeo/v25y2025i4p539-567..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Place-based policies: first-mover advantage and persistence

Author

Listed:
  • Ying Chen
  • Teng Huang
  • Xiaochen Xie

Abstract

Researchers have explored various place-based policies for promoting economic growth, but the long-term effects and drivers of successful policies have not been thoroughly studied. In this article, we first document significant heterogeneity in growth trends between early and late national development zones in China. Then, we develop a theoretical framework to analyze the influence of their establishment timing on the spatial equilibrium dynamics. Using new archival data and novel empirical strategies, we demonstrate that the early zones consistently have higher firm entries, innovation, and labor pooling. These results highlight the importance of agglomeration for the long-term success of place-based policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Ying Chen & Teng Huang & Xiaochen Xie, 2025. "Place-based policies: first-mover advantage and persistence," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 25(4), pages 539-567.
  • Handle: RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:25:y:2025:i:4:p:539-567.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jeg/lbaf001
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O18 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Urban, Rural, Regional, and Transportation Analysis; Housing; Infrastructure
    • R11 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - General Regional Economics - - - Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
    • R23 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:jecgeo:v:25:y:2025:i:4:p:539-567.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/joeg .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.