中文摘要：

使用1995—2014年中国三大城市群核心城市数据,分析其经济集聚水平和空间结构特征演化,并探讨经济集聚及其空间结构演化与地区经济增长的关系。研究发现,三大城市群经济增长过程中集聚水平的变化趋势验证了威廉姆森的倒U假说。同时,三大城市群集聚空间结构的演化趋势也显示,集聚空间结构的变化与地区经济发展水平和经济集聚程度之间同样存在倒U关系,即在经济发展初期,随着经济集聚水平提高,经济布局往往呈现出中心城市极化特征,但随着经济发展水平的提高,在经济活动趋于分散化的同时,经济集聚的空间结构也会向更加趋于多中心结构的方向演化。对经济集聚、空间结构演化和地区经济增长的格兰杰因果关系检验结果显示,经济集聚的确推动了三大城市群的经济增长,对于京津冀和珠三角主要是围绕中心城市的经济极化在推动地区经济增长,而对于长三角则主要是多中心集聚在推动地区经济增长。

英文摘要：

The Yangtze River delta region, the Pearl River delta region, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region are three most well-developed and competitive metropolitan regions in China. The study on the long-term spatial development and economic growth of these three regions will help reveal the development process and trend of large metropolitan regions in China. This paper uses the prefecture level city data from 1995 to 2014 to analyze the evolution of economic agglomeration and its spatial structure in these three regions, and examine the relationship between economic agglomeration, changing spatial structure and regional economic growth. The results show that the agglomeration of economic activities in these three major metropolitan regions changed over time with economic growth, and the trends provide the evidence to support the inverse U curve hypothesis of Williamson. Meanwhile, the evolvement of the spatial structure of agglomeration economies in these three regions also indicate there exists an inversed U curve relationship between the centrality of the spatial structure and the economic development and agglomeration levels, which means monocentricity will be enhanced with the increasing agglomeration of economic activities in the metropolitan region at the initial stage of development, while with the increase of economic development level, economic activities tend to be more dispersed as well as the spatial structure of agglomeration economies tend to be more polycentric. The Granger causality test on economic agglomeration, its spatial structure and regional economic growth shows that economic agglomeration is the Granger cause of economic growth in three regions, however in the Pearl River delta region and the Beijing- Tianjin- Hebei region, the monocentric agglomeration is the Granger cause of economic growth, while in the Yangtze River delta region, the polycentric agglomeration is the Granger cause of economic growth.