From the perspective of interlocking network, this paper compares two methods of defining urban hinterworld in the Yangtze River Delta, including the measurement of connectivity and relative connectivity. According to the theory of space of flows, relational data of enterprise branches is selected on the county-level space units in the 16 core cities. Three features have been identified. First, regional network structure could be revealed through the measurement of connectivity but the relative weak connections would be omitted. Second, administrative economy and cross-border connections could be examined deeply through the measurement of relative connectivity, especially to those space units with smaller aggregated connectivity. Third, combining these two methods together, a new way of defining urban hinterworld is proposed which could both reflect the connections between cities and also show the spaciality in the region. The findings of this paper are meaningful when the regional policies are formulated. The division of hinterworld is helpful for assessing the influences of cities and determining reasonable urban system. Empirical results enrich our understanding of the hinterworld in which both relatively strong and relatively weak connections exist at the same time. New perspectives and ways are provided to describe and analyze the relationship between center city and its hinterworld. In the new background and theoretical system, only through analysis of multi-angle observation and combination of a variety of methods we could have a deeper understanding of the regional city network, which is also an important area for future research concern.

Industry-university-research institute collaborative innovation process and its spatial structures attract the interest of researchers in many fields. With the rise of emerging economies and their technological upgrading, their spatial structure of innovation network is developing into an important research topic. And China, in particular, provides the opportunity to study the evolution of such network structures. With the help of some sophisticated data analysis software like SPSS, UCINET and ArcGIS, this paper discusses the above-mentioned issues based on graphical analysis and an empirical analysis of co-inventor networks of China's equipment manufacturing industry using patent data issued by the State Intellectual Property Office of P.R.China from 1985 to 2012. We reached three conclusions about the structural evolution of the industry-university-research institute collaborative innovation network of Chinese equipment manufacture industry. Firstly, our systematic examination has identified a rapid growth of patents and significant changes of actor composition from 1985 to 2012, which shows the rise of privately owned enterprises and universities around 2000, with universities standing out as the most significant and strongest actors in the process of building innovation networks, while state-owned enterprises only dominate some specific fields. Secondly, city-level is the major geographical scale of industry-university-research institute collaboration in developed cities; while undeveloped cities tend to cooperate with competent ones at provincial or national level. It is mainly because concentration of universities and firms with strong innovative ability makes it easy to find the perfect local partner, while weaker actors have to look for the best innovation partners across city boundaries. Last but not least, political decisions concerning R&D investment supported by provincial governments have a positive influence on interprovincial innovation activities. Meanwhile, the spatial political bias in China can lead to the hierarchical structure of Chinese innovation networks, which shows the significance of municipalities and provincial capital like Peking, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

The impact of environmental regulations on firms' productivities is a hot topic at present, but little attention has been paid to the geographic location aspect. As the literature show two kinds of theories named "Cost hypothesis" and "Porter hypothesis" according to the impact of environmental regulations on firms' productivities, this paper empirically analyzes the influences of spatial difference and interdependence of environmental regulations on firms' productivity based geographic data and micro-firm-level data for the period of 2004-2007. Our results show that spatial difference of environmental regulations has a significant impact on firms' total factor productivity with an inverted U-shaped relationship. That is to say, appropriate intensity of environmental regulations could promote firms' productivities, but if the environmental regulations are too intensive, firms' productivity might decrease. The effect of spatial correlation of environmental regulation is significant. The environmental regulation of neighborhoods can promote the productivity of firms in native city. Environmental regulation has a significant impact on the firms with high efficiency, but no significant influence on firms with low efficiency. Besides, the impact of environmental regulation on productivity of pollution-intensive firms is variant according to geographic location. The promotion of environmental regulation on firms' productivity is stronger in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. Our research suggests different mechanisms for the Cost hypothesis and Porter hypothesis in the context of geographic location. The governments shall make different regulations in different parts of the country instead of one policy.

In recent years, the Free Economic Zones (FEZs), as a product of economic globalization and regional economic integration, have become the growth poles of economic development in developing countries, the motivations of urbanization and a significant stage for the reforms of related institutions. In China, there is an urgent need to construct free trade zones in order to meet the new challenges of globalization and international trade structure, to strengthen the reform motivation, and to carry out the national strategies of One Belt and One Road and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei integration. At present, some experts and scholars scrutinize the rules and factors contributing to FEZs' development based on the qualitative analysis. However, they are still confronted with less research on evolution law in FEZs on account of quantitative research methods. Therefore, this paper applies methodologies such as interview, and questionnaire to collect data based on domestic and overseas theories and case studies about FEZs. It also adopts the analysis of hierarchy process and fuzzy evaluation method, selects seven elements: policies, markets, environments, industries, inputs, benefits and innovativeness, and establishes the index system and evaluation model of FEZs' development evolution mechanism. Finally, with the aid of the model and combined with the actual situation of Tianjin Binhai New Area, the paper analyzes the main driving forces of Tianjin Pilot Free Trade Zone's development dynamic mechanism. This study is an asset to the transformation and development of the FEZs in China as well as further theoretical research in the future.