Labor agglomeration is an essential driver of urban economies, yet administrative fragmentation has often constrained its efficiency. City Cluster Development Strategies (CCDS) have reshaped the dynamics of labor concentration, but how this reorganized labor agglomeration translates into low-carbon transitions remains underexplored. Using panel data from 212 cities within CCDS from 2008 to 2022 in China, this study constructs a spatially aware labor agglomeration index and employs fixed-effect models to examine its impact on decarbonization. The results reveal that a 10% increase in agglomeration reduces carbon intensity by 1.85%. This effect is more pronounced in regions with advanced urbanization, favorable human capital structures, inter-provincial city clusters, and late-developing cities. Mechanism analysis reveals that labor concentration drives decarbonization by optimizing industrial structures, fostering green innovation, and enhancing scale economies. These findings highlight how unlocking the structural dividend of demographic agglomeration can advance low-carbon development and inform other regions pursuing sustainable urban transitions.
The digital and green transitions are reshaping regional development strategies across Europe. However, little is known about the impact of ICT sector agglomeration on regional eco-efficiency. Moving beyond the common assumption of linear effects, we investigate whether the relationship is non-linear and how it varies along the core–periphery gradient. We measure eco-efficiency through the Global Malmquist–Luenberger index, which considers both economic output and CO2 emissions, and estimate a two-step difference GMM model for 173 European NUTS 2 regions between 2008 and 2019. Our results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship: moderate agglomeration enhances eco-efficiency, whereas excessive concentration reduces it, signalling congestion diseconomies. Peripheral and semi-central regions benefit most, while core regions appear to have surpassed their optimal concentration. Renewable energy and environmental policies further shape these outcomes. Thus, the impact of ICT agglomeration depends critically on regional characteristics, calling for place-based policies that integrate digital development with environmental sustainability.
Strengthening the competitiveness of European regions is crucial to addressing global challenges and informing effective place-based policies. We examine how international linkages – specifically Global Value Chains (GVCs) – interact with Relatedness Density to shape the Economic Complexity of EU regions, conceived as a structural precondition for long-run competitiveness. Using a detailed region-sector dataset covering the period 2000–2010, the analysis shows that the effects of sectoral GVCs participation depend on existing capabilities. Less-complex regions are more likely to upgrade their Economic Complexity when GVCs participation is coupled with a more related local activity portfolio. This study provides fresh evidence on the interplay between global and local factors in promoting more balanced regional development across EU regions.
The U.S. economy has undergone profound structural transformation in recent decades, predominantly influenced by globalization, rapid technological progress, and the residual effects of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC). This paper provides a comprehensive sectoral analysis of U.S. employment, real value-added, and labor productivity from 1998 to 2023, with a focus on the evolving divide between tradable and nontradable activities. Using a Divisia decomposition, we document a growing bifurcation in productivity performance. We find that frontier tradable sectors, especially high-tech services, information, and advanced manufacturing, continue to experience robust within-sector productivity growth, while employment increasingly concentrates in large nontradable services with persistently weak productivity growth. As a result, negative reallocation effects systematically offset frontier gains, dampening aggregate productivity growth despite continued technological dynamism. We show that this structural pattern also shapes wage outcomes, contributing to widening sectoral income disparities. Our findings reframe the U.S. productivity slowdown as a problem of structural composition and diffusion rather than technological exhaustion, highlighting the importance of extending productivity enhancing technologies into nontradable, employment-intensive sectors.
