Urban growth in Taiwan: The impacts of specialization, human capital, and land use policies, 1981-1996

The main purpose of this dissertation is to identify the economic determinants of urban growth in Taiwan. The proposed model assumes that the growth of areas with different economic specializations changes along with the changing industrial structure of the nation, which simply represents shifts in the composition of national demand.;Two sets of study units are used in this study: townships and counties. This research covers all the townships, counties, cities, provincial municipalities, and special municipalities on Taiwan island from 1981 to 1996. The growth of population or real per capita earnings in a township is hypothesized to depend on its initial specialization, the growth of the traded sectors in that area, and the growth of its human capital. The growth in a county is hypothesized to be related to its initial specialization, its initial percentage of readjusted and expropriated area, the growth of its human capital, and the time effects. Because the growth equations at the county level are insignificant, level equations of the model at the county level are estimated instead.;The growth equations at the township level indicate that the national shift to a relatively higher demand for information sector output enhances the growth of real per capita earnings in townships more specialized in information (INF), but does not depress the growth in townships more specialized in goods production and distribution (GPD). The level equations of counties do not support the hypothesis of specializations. A highly specialized county in GPD or in INF tends to have lower level of real per capita earnings.;Growth in GPD earnings in a township adds more to real per capita earnings growth in that area than growth in INF earnings does, but the difference narrows over time. Most of the human capital variables, the proxy of changes in technology, are insignificant. The percentage of expropriated area in a county is positively related to the level of its real per capita earnings.;The model is also tested using two types of specialized townships: GPD-specialized and INF-specialized. The results show that there is no synergy existing between GPD and INF sectors.