International Regional Science Review

Despite development efforts, Native Nations exhibit higher poverty rates and associated social concerns than other US areas. Business development is a way to sustainably reduce poverty. This article uses several estimation techniques to provide longitudinal descriptive evidence on business activity in Native Nations sharing geographies with the contiguous United States using county level data spanning portions of the Self-Determination Era (1968–2000) and the Nation-to-Nation Era (2000-present). In doing so, this article contributes to existing work about Native American economic development by assessing business trends in Native areas over time. The analysis yielded three important findings. First, Native American counties have higher firm counts and business churn per capita than other counties. Second, Native American businesses are more likely to be employers than nonemployers on average, suggesting Native American businesses reach the important business milestone of having employees at a higher percentage than Non-Native American businesses. Third, employment in Native American areas is especially concentrated in a few sectors (e.g., construction, retail trade, and accommodation and food services), and while these areas were less concentrated than Non-Native American counties in the early 2000s, there is suggestive evidence that they are becoming more concentrated over time. In terms of implications, policy should continue to take a more progressive stance in Native American areas. Policy should aim to improve entrepreneurship and industrial diversity in those areas to improve economic resiliency. Long-term policies should focus on diversifying the local economies of Native American counties to more sustainable engines of growth.

A cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis of social and economic effects of regional administrative and fiscal decentralisation is carried out. Spain regions from 2008 to 2021 are analysed by means of Data Envelopment Analysis as well as bootstrapped Tobit regressions and panel data. The study contributes to ongoing debates in regional science by introducing a horizontal approach to decentralisation—comparing institutional variation across regions at the same administrative level—thus complementing the traditionally vertical analyses between levels of government. Results show that both administrative and fiscally decentralised regions have better socio-economic performance, except for 3 years when considering social efficiency of administrative decentralisation by means of cross-sectional analysis. This article contributes to the field of federalisation theory in the following three ways: (1) when recessions start, administrative decentralisation reduces social efficiency which justify centralisation to deal with crises; (2) the design of decentralisation is the key factor to be considered; (3) it is necessary to avoid the overlapping of regional public administration. The results offer theoretical support for second-generation fiscal federalism theories, which stress the importance of institutional design, governance quality and incentive alignment. For policy makers, the findings suggest that decentralisation per se is not sufficient: well-calibrated fiscal rules and institutional clarity are essential to enhance efficiency. Internationally, our evidence highlights lessons for federal and asymmetrically decentralised systems, particularly regarding the risk of inefficiencies stemming from overlapping competences.

This paper analyzes the intrinsic relationship between urban innovation capability and inter-city collaborative innovation, utilizing panel data for 76 cities within China’s Yangtze River Economic Belt covering the period 2005–2021. The results indicate that as a city’s innovation capability strengthens, the level of collaborative innovation among them significantly increases. This positive effect operates through promoting the flow of innovative elements, enhancing knowledge spillovers, and fostering technological complementarity. Further analysis reveals that high-speed rail connectivity, supportive government innovation policies, and higher city administrative levels significantly reinforce this positive relationship. While enterprises currently dominate inter-city collaboration, significant potential remains for collaborations involving enterprises and governments, research institutions, and universities. Furthermore, our analysis confirms that innovation capability has a positive spatial spillover effect on inter-city collaborative innovation. Heterogeneity analyses reveal that enhancing urban innovation capability selectively promotes substantive collaborative innovation while inhibiting non-substantive forms, and this positive promoting effect is particularly pronounced within technology-intensive industries. This research offers new perspectives on the capability-collaboration linkage within a major economic region, providing empirically grounded support for implementing innovation-driven development strategies.

Understanding how regional cooperation shapes urban land use efficiency is essential for promoting sustainable development of urban agglomeration. Existing literature mainly focuses on the direct impact of regional economic cooperation on urban land use efficiency while overlooking the indirect effects transmitted through intercity network structures. This study investigates the effects of regional economic cooperation network on urban land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration between 2010 and 2019. Utilizing a modified gravity model to quantify regional economic cooperation networks and a Slack-Based Measure method to evaluate urban land use efficiency, we reveal a significant and positive influence of regional economic cooperation networks on land use efficiency in the Yangtze River Delta. The findings suggest that cities leveraging economic interconnectivity networks not only enhance their land-use efficiency but also benefit from network spillover effects. These insights provide valuable implications for policymakers and urban designers seeking to promote economic development while ensuring the sustainable use of urban land resources.