Counties are critical territorial units for examining regional imbalance and urban–rural linkage in China. Using a balanced 2010–2022 panel of 1,865 mainland Chinese county-level territorial units, this study constructed a multidimensional county development index covering six socioeconomic and environmental dimensions. A question-led framework was applied to examine spatial inequality, distributional persistence, development-tier mobility and exploratory spatial associations. Dagum Gini decomposition and Moran’s I/LISA were used to identify the magnitude, sources and spatial structure of inequality. Dynamic kernel density estimation, traditional Markov matrices and spatial Markov matrices were used to examine distributional dynamics and neighbor-conditioned transition probabilities. In addition, the optimal-parameters-based geographical detector (OPGD) was used to identify spatially stratified associations and factor interactions. These results showed that county development improved overall but remained spatially uneven, with a persistent southeast-northwest gradient and significant positive spatial autocorrelation. Overall inequality declined before 2018 but re-expanded afterward, with inter-regional disparities becoming more important. Relative development tiers were persistent but permeable. Transitions were concentrated between adjacent states, endpoint persistence was strong, and intermediate counties were more sensitive to neighboring development environments. The OPGD results indicate that topographic and locational strata, together with their interactions with socioeconomic conditions, are closely associated with spatial differentiation, although these associations should not be interpreted as causal mechanisms. These findings highlight the need for differentiated strategies, cross-regional coordination and long-term capacity building in low-development counties.
This paper investigates regional heterogeneity in labour-market adjustment across nine peripheral regencies and municipalities of Western Papua, Indonesia from 2010 to 2025, examining how unemployment persistence and structural heterogeneity shape labour-market adjustments in a differentiated regional system with conditional scenario projections to 2030. An interpretive typology of differentiated peripherality—urban commercial hub, resource-based enclave, locked-in administrative, subsistence-dominant and integrated peripheral—frames why growth reaches local labour markets unevenly. A dynamic fixed-effects panel grounded in regional Okun's law incorporates unemployment persistence, COVID-period effects, and an output-based Herfindahl–Hirschman measure of sectoral diversification. Wild cluster bootstrap inference, appropriate to the panel's nine-cluster dimension, yields a hierarchy of results. Persistence is large and robustly estimated (β₂ = 0.437; WCB p < 0.01), with 44
This study investigated the self-employment decisions of internal return migrants in rural Jharkhand, India, using micro-level primary household survey data. To address potential endogeneity between return migration and self-employment decisions, the analysis employed a recursive bivariate probit model, which jointly estimated return migration and employment equations while accounting for unobserved heterogeneity. The results showed that return migration has a positive and statistically significant effect on self-employment, indicating a substantially higher probability of self-employment among return migrant households. The findings suggest that facilitating the productive reintegration of return migrants through entrepreneurship support may strengthen rural livelihoods.
Local amenities, such as security and the environment, affect utility. Regional differences in utility drive labor migration. Therefore, this study uses a framework wherein local security and environmental conditions influence utility, while differences in utility between rural and urban areas motivate regional migration. A key feature of this study is the introduction of security into the analysis. Using comparative static analysis within a general equilibrium model, the effects of an increase in police presence and a decrease in the rate of pollution generation are theoretically investigated. An increase in police presence aimed at improving security creates a trade-off of decreasing private-sector labor. This reduction in private-sector labor alters the economic structure through regional migration. The study shows that increasing police presence improves security but deteriorates the environment. Changes in the unemployment ratio and workers’ aggregate welfare depend on the relative strength of these effects. If the positive effect of improved security outweighs the negative effect of environmental deterioration, workers’ aggregate welfare increases even though the unemployment ratio also rises. In contrast, a decrease in the rate of pollution generation improves the environment but worsens security. Moreover, both the unemployment ratio and workers’ aggregate welfare necessarily increase.
This study aimed to show why people and place-based policies should be grounded on people and place research, using Generalized Q Analysis, and shift the focus of the research from the features of observed entities on the study of entities associated with combined and evident features of people and places. For the present study “people and places” were recent alumni from the University of North Kazakhstan. The “people and place-based policies” were programs of English proficiency and international mobility provided by the University. The literature links regional development with human capital and professional wellbeing, as well as English proficiency and international mobility. First, to test this hypothesis we used a regression relating professional wellbeing of 1250 alumni with their places of origin, gender, marks, sector of employment, English proficiency and international mobility, but no major evidence was achieved. Then, to test people and places that have higher professional wellbeing, following a Generalized Q Analysis 1250 alumni from the University of North Kazakhstan were explained analyzed by 10 profiles. On the one hand, directly related with professional wellbeing and, on the other hand, clustered and related with professional wellbeing using differences and differences regression. Results indicated that people with English proficiency did not have higher professional well-being because English was not useful for existing follow-up studies and for more common employment. Alumni with professional wellbeing were male, self-employed, urban or rural that participated in student mobility activities most probably in a Russian speaking language environment. This clearer evidence justifies more attention to people and place-based approaches for people and place-based policies.
