中文摘要：

关于国家空间发展战略,经济学家主张要素向中国沿海发达地区自由流动,而城市和经济地理学家则认为应对不发达地区发展给予支持。本文以国家尺度的城市规模分布来测度经济地理格局和城市化空间结构,综合运用截面和面板双重估计方法,探索了国家经济地理格局与国家规模的关系。结论显示,在控制了其他因素后,表征国家规模的人口规模和国土面积与国家经济地理的均衡分布呈现显著正相关,即大国的经济地理倾向于多中心均衡布局。机制在于,经济中心的辐射半径不是无限的,地理或者更准确地说是距离对于生产力和城市化布局具有重要作用。此外,随着经济水平的提高,国家经济地理格局呈现先极化后均衡的演化趋势;城市化率和非农产业比重的提高以及稳定的政治环境同样也会促进国家经济地理格局向均衡方向发展。再考虑到国家安全、社会稳定的政治诉求和中国地大物博的既有现实,本文政策启示是,大国的经济地理和城市化格局应该走适度均衡发展之路,国家采取空间干预政策促进中国不发达地区的发展有其合理性和必要性。

英文摘要：

There is a debate on whether spatially-neutral or spatially-targeted policy is a better strategy for the future development of economic geography and the spatial pattern of urbanization at the national scale.Economists emphasize the spatially-neutral policy and advocate for the free flow of production factors to the developed regions in southeast China,while economic geographers support the latter and the development of central and western China.We argue that the radiation radius of an economic hub is not limitless because of geography,more precisely,it is distance that plays an important role in the distribution of production activities and urbanization.We also believe that not only should economic benefits be taken into account,but also other factors such as politics,ethnic minority and national security.The core point of this paper is that the scale of a nation is the key determinant of the spatial layout of economic geography and urbanization,and larger countries should follow a relatively balanced development path.Based on both cross-sectional and fixed-effect panel models,we explore the relationship between the scale of a nation and city size distribution,the proxy for the spatial pattern of national economic geography.The results show that,（1） all else being equal,the scale of a nation,represented by either population or land area,is positively associated with a balanced city size distribution.That is,the economic geography in large countries is inclined to a spatially balanced layout;（2） a nonlinear relationship is identified between the spatial pattern of national economic geography and per capita GDP.That is,national spatial pattern is unbalanced at lower levels of economic development and evens out at higher levels of development;（3） urbanization,industrialization,and a stable political environment also help balance the national economic geography layout.This study＇s policy implication is that large countries such as China should implement the strategy of a relatively balanced development