Do polycentric urban regions promote functional spillovers and economic performance? Evidence from China

Although the literature often suggests that the economic prowess of ‘polycentric urban regions’ partly results from the ability of their constituent cities to promote functional spillovers through ‘borrowed size’, the empirical evidence remains scarce. This paper finds that polycentricity boosts the positive functional spillovers of producer service sector of city clusters beyond their boundaries only when city clusters have larger population and better urban infrastructure connectivity. And consequently, functional spillovers increase urban labour productivity. The labour division among cities could be the essential mechanism for the linkage between polycentricity and regional functional spillovers.