The deregulation and the increased competition in the service industry have directly led to the intense interest in and focus on the quality of emotional interaction between service providers and receivers. As a parallel to physical labour and mental labour, emotional labour (EL) is a new issue in organizational HRM requiring attention and solution. Though in recent years research on emotional labour has multiplied, it is more or less restricted to profit and government organization. As important providers of social and public services, the employees in not-for-profit organizations need to perform heavy and complex EL in accordance with the organizational rules as well. As opposed to public/private sectors, the NFP organization carries out the organization mission with non-government characteristics at the organizational level and promotes the voluntary sprit and the unbalanced HR structure at the staff level, which leads the staff of NFPs to perform much heavier and complex EL. Therefore, EL should be embedded into the HRM of NFP organizations. Besides, EL and its management not only bring new connotations and perspectives to the HRM of NFP organizations, but innovative ideas of reforming and optimizing the HR functions of NFP organizations in future.The deregulation and the increased competition in the service industry have directly led to the intense interest in and focus on the quality of emotional interaction between service providers and receivers. As a parallel to physical labour and mental labour, emotional labour (EL) is a new issue in organizational HRM requiring attention and solution. Though in recent years research on emotional labour has multiplied, it is more or less restricted to profit and government organization. As important providers of social and public services, the employees in not-for-profit organizations need to perform heavy and complex EL in accordance with the organizational rules as well. As opposed to public/private sectors, the NFP organization carries out the organization mission with non-government characteristics at the organizational level and promotes the voluntary sprit and the unbalanced HR structure at the staff level, which leads the staff of NFPs to perform much heavier and complex EL. Therefore, EL should be embedded into the HRM of NFP organizations. Besides, EL and its management not only bring new connotations and perspectives to the HRM of NFP organizations, but innovative ideas of reforming and optimizing the HR functions of NFP organizations in future.

As a new concept in the field of public management, public productivity has become an important criterion for measuring government management and public service, and a significant sign reflecting the public managing competence of the government. China is now in a critical period of economic and social transition as well as administrative system reform. The study on public productivity offers a new approach to the interpretation of administrative system reform and the improvement of public management capacity. Based on previous research done by western scholars，we contend that public productivity can be comprehended from the following three perspectives. First, public productivity is a unit of measurement of efficiency and effects, which explains how the public resources are used effectively and efficiently. Second, the term “public” underlines the publicness of the public productivity, which refers to the capacity of the public sector, the government in particular, to allocate and employ public resources to meet public needs. Third, public productivity should comply with the value of public ethics and the rule of law. Public productivity and productivity share similarities in the sense that they both pursue economy and pay great attention to management. However, public productivity entails profound political values and attaches more importance to transparency, participation, responsiveness, obligation, trust and the balance of interests, etc. In addition, it is subject to laws and embedded with the value orientation of public ethics. This paper establishes an analytical framework based on the five dimensions of economics, management, politics, laws and ethics, and attempts to analyze comprehensively the current situation and problems of public productivity in China. First, from the economic point of view, public productivity is reflected in the efficiency of the public sector in the allocation of scarce resources, or how to maximize the allocation efficiency of public resources. Here, we deal mainly with the economy and efficiency of the activities of the public sector. Second, from the management point of view, we can evaluate public productivity from the perspective of basic management functions such as planning, organization, leadership and control, etc. Third, from the political point of view, we can analyze public productivity mainly through the functioning of the public sector in public policy-making and the transparency, participation, responsiveness, obligation, trust and balance of interests since the use and allocation of public resources are mainly determined by the public policies made by the representative institution or the government. Fourth, from the legal point of view, we can study the legitimacy of public productivity through legal procedures, legal entity, legality and the strength of enforcement. Fifth, from the ethical point of view, we can analyze public productivity by focusing on fairness and justice as well as obligation. From the five aforementioned dimensions, several characteristics of the public productivity in China are displayed in the following. First, the capacity of the public sector is quite high in terms of resource allocation and social mobilization. Second, progress has been made in administrative system reform and government management innovation. Third, political democratization has been improved, and the level of public participation in public policy-making has been enhanced. Fourth, progress has been achieved in the construction of the government by the rule of law. Fifth, the public management and public service have started to become more people-oriented and concern more about fairness and justice. Nonetheless, the overall standard of public productivity is still low in China due to many factors in the transition period. First, the cost of resource allocation in the public sector is too high. Second, the management level of the public sector is relatively low. Third, civic engagement and public supervision are insufficient in public affairs management and public policy making. Fourth, the capability of administration according to law in the public sector is yet to be improved. Fifth, there are the sober concerns of the degradation of ethical values. Based on the above analysis, we argue that public productivity can be promoted from the following perspectives. First, from the perspective of economics, the market mechanisms should be introduced more to the public sector in order to improve the development of the PPP（public-private partnership） model for public service. Second, from the perspective of management, more emphasis should be put on the public organization reform and the innovation of public management techniques. Third, from the perspective of politics, we should advocate more public participation in public policy making. Fourth, from the perspective of law, the government should strengthen administration by law so as to increase the legitimacy of government administration. Fifth, from the perspective of ethics, the government should reinforce the construction of public ethics. Besides, from the perspective of integration, a comprehensive evaluation system of public productivity should be set up in the public sector. This research tries to promote the development of the study on public productivity in China. First, this paper fills in a gap in the systematic study of public productivity in China, and defines the concept of public productivity based on the existing research. Second, the paper sets up an analytical framework and applies it to the comprehensive analysis of the public productivity in China. Last, the paper proposes the construction of a set of evaluation indicators and mechanism as guidance for practice.

The first Gilded Age of the United States was the late 19th century, right after the American Civil War, and the second Gilded Age refers to the period from Reagan administration to 2007 when the financial crisis occurred. Both Gilded Ages witnessed rapid economic growth. However, rapid economic growth was not necessarily cost-free. It might have been achieved at the expenses of the interest of disadvantaged labor class and of long-term public interests, and by the abuse of natural resources. This article focuses on the problems of the Gilded Ages and the policy solutions provided by the American government. The lessons left by the two Gilded Ages might be of value to policy makers in China whose economy is experiencing rapid growth.

The article briefly spells out the main characteristics of the so-called ″Nordic welfare model″, which is perceived as a distinct model of Western welfare states. One main characteristic has been social security, health, and education policies which encompass the entire population, or in other words: social policies based on the principle of ″universalism″. The authors discuss in particular, with reference to recent reform trends, whether this principle is being threatened in the Norwegian welfare state. Justifications for the principle of universalism are presented. Welfare states are in general based on different norms, values and principles, and the authors present and discuss the major principles and argue that we can observe a shift in emphasis in recent reforms in modern Nordic and European welfare states from the principle of universalism towards more emphasis on the principles of reciprocity and targeting, which imply more emphasis on contracts, duties and incentives for people to take greater responsibility for their own welfare.The article briefly spells out the main characteristics of the so-called ″Nordic welfare model″, which is perceived as a distinct model of Western welfare states. One main characteristic has been social security, health, and education policies which encompass the entire population, or in other words: social policies based on the principle of ″universalism″. The authors discuss in particular, with reference to recent reform trends, whether this principle is being threatened in the Norwegian welfare state. Justifications for the principle of universalism are presented. Welfare states are in general based on different norms, values and principles, and the authors present and discuss the major principles and argue that we can observe a shift in emphasis in recent reforms in modern Nordic and European welfare states from the principle of universalism towards more emphasis on the principles of reciprocity and targeting, which imply more emphasis on contracts, duties and incentives for people to take greater responsibility for their own welfare.

The objective of this article is to provide an account of the activation turn that has taken place in most OECD countries over the last two decades. Taking a political science perspective, this article puts forward a number of explanations that help us understand why this happened. It argues that three factors are particularly helpful in order to account for this shift：the development of post-industrial labour markets in OECD economies; the failure of alternative approaches to mass unemployment and the wish of political parties to claim credit for innovative and modern labour market reforms. This argument is illustrated by the trajectories followed in seven European countries： Denmark, the UK, the Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France and Italy.

China is currently facing normalized and complex nontraditional security issues, greatly challenging the basic social order, people’s lives, property and living environment. As a consequence, “security governance”, which asserts public protection, mutual protection, other’s protection and self protection, is now showing a strong tendency to replace the traditional “security management” and “security control” and is therefore on the rise as an alternative “paradigm” to nontraditional security capacity building. With the purpose of enhancing the capacity of security governance, the developed countries have gradually built up the modern civil protection system, comprehensively encompassing the defense of air bomb, war, nuclear threats, disaster, terrorist attack, and social disorder. Since the opening up policy was launched, China has been searching for its own pathways to a modern civil protection system. Nevertheless, the Chinese civil protection system remains insufficient in terms of idea, law, institution, and international cooperation. In view of this, the present paper, with the fundamental goal of human security, proposes the design of a Chinese modern civil protection system which includes “civil protection in war”, “civil protection in disaster”, and “civil protection in daily life”. To fully realize the goals of China’s modern civil protection, this paper further puts forward the following suggestions. Firstly, the formulation of civil protection laws is necessary to provide standards and legal basis for the protection of human security. Secondly, an actionable civil-military commanding organization and state-civilian interactive response system are needed to make full use of the resources of military and societal actors. Thirdly, special military forces should be built up in response to war and major nontraditional security issues. Semi-military forces should be set up for regular nontraditional security management. In addition, an institutionalized cooperation system between the two types of forces is a must. Fourthly, the trust in and capacity reserve for the novel security concept, creative involvement and inclusive development should be enhanced for Chinese international cooperation to ensure the security of overseas Chinese and other peoples in the world. This paper is based on the fact that China is facing the interrelated challenge of traditional and nontraditional security issues and that China is responding to the urgent pressure of promoting the capacity of security governance. In a word, by comparing the civil protection system of China and those of developed countries, the paper tries to find out the insufficiencies of China’s civil protection, and to put forward new ideas of top design and application framework for improving the capacity of China’s security governance in the new era. China is currently facing normalized and complex nontraditional security issues, greatly challenging the basic social order, people’s lives, property and living environment. As a consequence, “security governance”, which asserts public protection, mutual protection, other’s protection and self protection, is now showing a strong tendency to replace the traditional “security management” and “security control” and is therefore on the rise as an alternative “paradigm” to nontraditional security capacity building. With the purpose of enhancing the capacity of security governance, the developed countries have gradually built up the modern civil protection system, comprehensively encompassing the defense of air bomb, war, nuclear threats, disaster, terrorist attack, and social disorder. Since the opening up policy was launched, China has been searching for its own pathways to a modern civil protection system. Nevertheless, the Chinese civil protection system remains insufficient in terms of idea, law, institution, and international cooperation. In view of this, the present paper, with the fundamental goal of human security, proposes the design of a Chinese modern civil protection system which includes “civil protection in war”, “civil protection in disaster”, and “civil protection in daily life”. To fully realize the goals of China’s modern civil protection, this paper further puts forward the following suggestions. Firstly, the formulation of civil protection laws is necessary to provide standards and legal basis for the protection of human security. Secondly, an actionable civil-military commanding organization and state-civilian interactive response system are needed to make full use of the resources of military and societal actors. Thirdly, special military forces should be built up in response to war and major nontraditional security issues. Semi-military forces should be set up for regular nontraditional security management. In addition, an institutionalized cooperation system between the two types of forces is a must. Fourthly, the trust in and capacity reserve for the novel security concept, creative involvement and inclusive development should be enhanced for Chinese international cooperation to ensure the security of overseas Chinese and other peoples in the world. This paper is based on the fact that China is facing the interrelated challenge of traditional and nontraditional security issues and that China is responding to the urgent pressure of promoting the capacity of security governance. In a word, by comparing the civil protection system of China and those of developed countries, the paper tries to find out the insufficiencies of China’s civil protection, and to put forward new ideas of top design and application framework for improving the capacity of China’s security governance in the new era. 
China is currently facing normalized and complex nontraditional security issues, greatly challenging the basic social order, people’s lives, property and living environment. As a consequence, “security governance”, which asserts public protection, mutual protection, other’s protection and self protection, is now showing a strong tendency to replace the traditional “security management” and “security control” and is therefore on the rise as an alternative “paradigm” to nontraditional security capacity building. With the purpose of enhancing the capacity of security governance, the developed countries have gradually built up the modern civil protection system, comprehensively encompassing the defense of air bomb, war, nuclear threats, disaster, terrorist attack, and social disorder. Since the opening up policy was launched, China has been searching for its own pathways to a modern civil protection system. Nevertheless, the Chinese civil protection system remains insufficient in terms of idea, law, institution, and international cooperation. In view of this, the present paper, with the fundamental goal of human security, proposes the design of a Chinese modern civil protection system which includes “civil protection in war”, “civil protection in disaster”, and “civil protection in daily life”. To fully realize the goals of China’s modern civil protection, this paper further puts forward the following suggestions. Firstly, the formulation of civil protection laws is necessary to provide standards and legal basis for the protection of human security. Secondly, an actionable civil-military commanding organization and state-civilian interactive response system are needed to make full use of the resources of military and societal actors. Thirdly, special military forces should be built up in response to war and major nontraditional security issues. Semi-military forces should be set up for regular nontraditional security management. In addition, an institutionalized cooperation system between the two types of forces is a must. Fourthly, the trust in and capacity reserve for the novel security concept, creative involvement and inclusive development should be enhanced for Chinese international cooperation to ensure the security of overseas Chinese and other peoples in the world. This paper is based on the fact that China is facing the interrelated challenge of traditional and nontraditional security issues and that China is responding to the urgent pressure of promoting the capacity of security governance. In a word, by comparing the civil protection system of China and those of developed countries, the paper tries to find out the insufficiencies of China’s civil protection, and to put forward new ideas of top design and application framework for improving the capacity of China’s security governance in the new era.

In social science research, the concept of “disaster” originates from the studies on both society and natural hazards. As a result, disaster research has obtained an inter-disciplinary status. While there are numerous definitions of “disaster” from a natural science perspective, a characterization from the point of view of social science has been understated. Consequently, a uniform definition of “disaster” that encompasses both society and natural hazards does still not exist. In order to narrow this definitional gap, this article attempts to analyze the concept of disaster from a social science perspective. Traditionally, main social science cognitions have been classified according to event-functionalism, social constructivism, as well as vulnerability, uncertainty, and power resources. First，the functionalist or event-based still serves as mainstream approaches to characterize disasters, which regard disaster as suddenly-occurring disruptions originating from either natural or technological hazards and exceeding the resources and capabilities possessed by the social system. Second，in contrast with functionalist and event-based orientation of the disaster research tradition, hazards vulnerability views disaster as the product of the joint functioning of natural system and human system Third，the social constructionist approach to disaster, argues against viewing disasters as objective physical phenomena with given properties and impacts. From their perspective, defining and labeling disaster are social process of producing claims. The social process affects the claims about disasters and their consequences. Fourth， theory of risk society，originating form European, describes present western society as “risk society”. Unlike classical disaster research methods, this position sees disaster as caused by social system itself, rather than originating outside social system, and conceptualizes disaster as an inevitable and direct consequence of the social relations and practices that characterize modern society. Fifth，influenced by conflict perspective, disaster research from the power resource perspective views the problem of disaster as representation of social problem. Disaster do not result from the failure of systems in coping with environmental extremes but rather are closely interwoven with ongoing social status. Disaster is the normal outcome of unfairly social development. Taking all these approaches into account, the result of this study presents a new logical analysis framework constructed on the pillars of “hazard”, ”linkage” and “consequence”. It facilitates an understanding of disaster research from a social science approach. Finally, we reveal that holistic research paradigm is the trend of disaster research

Government information sharing has been developing against a background of detailed division of government functions, reform of public administration and advancement of information technology on a global scope. In China, the construction of government information sharing dates back to the 1990s, when China started up the process of informationization. A decade later, remarkable progresses of government information sharing have been made especially in three aspects, i.e. scientific data, administrative regulation and administrative supply. It has significant implications for improving the scientific decision-making of government, advancing the quality of administrative regulation and promoting the efficiency of public service. Nevertheless, in practice, several problems regarding government information sharing, including low enthusiasm, insufficient validity and weak operability, have been showing up. Further development of government information sharing has been blocked due to those problems. The root cause of those problems is the imperfect of China's administrative system including absence of administrative authority, restraint of administrative organization and constraint of administrative procedure, which is not conformable to the development of government information sharing. In March 2011, the long anticipated ″China's 12th Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development″ （″the Plan″）was approved by the National People's Congress. The Plan emphasizes the importance of E-government and intends to promote information sharing between different administrative agencies in important areas. For the time being, in order to fulfill the objectives of the Plan, the solutions to the problems mentioned above lie in reforming government function, administrative organization and operative mechanism, based on the construction of government ruled by law. Effective countermeasures have to be taken such as enacting a relevant administrative law to make clear the right and accountability, amending administrative organization law to remold government system and improving administrative procedure law to establish operational mechanisms.

Any political or administrative activity can be separated into decision-making, execution and supervision, and correspondingly, power can be divided into the power of decision-making, the power of execution and the power of supervision. According to this classic framework of trisection, corruption falls into the corruption in decision-making, the corruption in execution and the corruption in supervision. Among them, the corruption in decision-making refers to the deviation of the exercise of public power from public interest in decision-making. Specifically, in the process of decision-making in law and/or policy, development planning, the selection and appointment of officials, public investment, and so on, the decision maker disobeys public interest or gains an unfair advantage for its own interest or for the stakeholders. It is not only distinguished from decision errors by its subjective factor, but also different in their objective performance from corruption in execution and supervision, such as authority and effectiveness. The current tough corruption issue faced by our party and government has much to do with those "leaders" who are mainly responsible for decision-making, indicating the lack of corruption control in China’s current decision-making system. Therefore, the effective control of corruption in decision-making is of great significance to solve the problem of party and government leaders’ corruption. Under the framework of In-Out system analysis, the absence of restriction and supervision mechanism at the input side, within-system and output side of the present decision-making system has left institutionalized space for the realization of improper self-interest and led to the corruption in decision. For this reason, the public-interest-oriented mechanism for power restriction and supervision should be established and strengthened because it can facilitate the constraint of decision-making power and form a complete chain of supervision in order to squeeze as much institutionalized space of self-service as possible. What is more important is to open up institutionalized channels for the public interest to merge into the decision-making system so as to maximize the public interest and to realize the clean and efficient governance of the decision-making process. To be more specific, at the input end, the expression mechanism of public interest should be improved to curb the interest groups’ control of the public policy agenda; within the decision-making system, a sound decision-making mechanism should be designed to integrate public interests and to prevent unauthorized access to private interests; and at the output end, especially in the choice of decisions, a democratic resolution mechanism should exert its full impact. This corruption governance, which is based on the control of the decision-making process, is an effective way to supervise the “leaders” in our current system. The position of the “leaders” determines the difficulty of monitoring them. Controlling the decision-making process will transform the supervision of leaders (people) into the supervision of decision-making (things), thus transforming the focus on “things” to that on “people”. This is undoubtedly of great significance to the avoidance of the negative impact of supervision caused by authority.Any political or administrative activity can be separated into decision-making, execution and supervision, and correspondingly, power can be divided into the power of decision-making, the power of execution and the power of supervision. According to this classic framework of trisection, corruption falls into the corruption in decision-making, the corruption in execution and the corruption in supervision. Among them, the corruption in decision-making refers to the deviation of the exercise of public power from public interest in decision-making. Specifically, in the process of decision-making in law and/or policy, development planning, the selection and appointment of officials, public investment, and so on, the decision maker disobeys public interest or gains an unfair advantage for its own interest or for the stakeholders. It is not only distinguished from decision errors by its subjective factor, but also different in their objective performance from corruption in execution and supervision, such as authority and effectiveness. The current tough corruption issue faced by our party and government has much to do with those "leaders" who are mainly responsible for decision-making, indicating the lack of corruption control in China’s current decision-making system. Therefore, the effective control of corruption in decision-making is of great significance to solve the problem of party and government leaders’ corruption. Under the framework of In-Out system analysis, the absence of restriction and supervision mechanism at the input side, within-system and output side of the present decision-making system has left institutionalized space for the realization of improper self-interest and led to the corruption in decision. For this reason, the public-interest-oriented mechanism for power restriction and supervision should be established and strengthened because it can facilitate the constraint of decision-making power and form a complete chain of supervision in order to squeeze as much institutionalized space of self-service as possible. What is more important is to open up institutionalized channels for the public interest to merge into the decision-making system so as to maximize the public interest and to realize the clean and efficient governance of the decision-making process. To be more specific, at the input end, the expression mechanism of public interest should be improved to curb the interest groups’ control of the public policy agenda; within the decision-making system, a sound decision-making mechanism should be designed to integrate public interests and to prevent unauthorized access to private interests; and at the output end, especially in the choice of decisions, a democratic resolution mechanism should exert its full impact. This corruption governance, which is based on the control of the decision-making process, is an effective way to supervise the “leaders” in our current system. The position of the “leaders” determines the difficulty of monitoring them. Controlling the decision-making process will transform the supervision of leaders (people) into the supervision of decision-making (things), thus transforming the focus on “things” to that on “people”. This is undoubtedly of great significance to the avoidance of the negative impact of supervision caused by authority.

The national governance is currently under the alternative influence of two contradictory motivation mechanisms-motivations from formal and informal systems, which leads to the ineffective governance of ″the public power for public use only″. As soon as market economy was ushered in, national governors, who used to be in control of the national power, began to show the complicated motivation of their behaviors. That is, the governors in charge of public power also claim personal interests. They have their own priority between political ethics and economic claims. As long as the institutional motivation mechanism keeps producing decreased effects, the non-institutional motivation mechanism would grow rapidly without adequate means of institutional incentives.  As formal institutions are unable to sustain themselves, informal institutions, that is, the customs and regulations, would be short of incentive potency to make people obey formal rules. In other words, when laws and regulations lack institutional capability, informal rules would become deformed and contorted, and eventually become a defensive account for those who are provoked to make a reckless move towards corruption and illegal transactions. As a result, corruption has proved to be another term for such informal motivation mechanisms. For the reconstruction of governors' motivation mechanism, it is crucial to establish a brand new motivation system with the function of rebooting the potency of institutional motivation and responding to the motivation claims of the era as well. There are two approaches to the rebuilding of motivation mechanism in formal institutions. On one hand, the approach of backward retreat is an attempt to recover the motivation mechanism in the age of planned economy. On the other hand, the approach of forward improvement is the endeavor to construct a motivation mechanism complying with legalization and regularization as well as satisfying the needs of the age of market economy. This reconstruction work in the age of market economy requires that the group of governors be treated again as ordinary human beings. On this basis, it is necessary to design five types of demands that accord with different levels of human needs from spiritual value to physical desire. Another important dimension is that the institutional means of motivation ought to be provided to complete the reconstruction. In this way, the rule of law which sets strict and specific rules for the society, and customs which set conventional norms that discipline human behaviors, are able to cooperate and effectively restrain governors in their ″human″ form. There is no doubt that the reconstruction of such motivations has a long way to go.

Since China’s reform and opening up, its infrastructure has been improved dramatically, creating the so-called infrastructure miracle. As we have already known that intra-region trade costs and inter-region trade cost, which are determined by the quality of infrastructure, have crucial effects on the spatial distribution of industries across regions within a country. Adopting the footloose capital model, we investigate the effects of trade cost differences due to infrastructure quality on regional industrial agglomeration, regional gap and social welfare. The main findings of the paper are listed as follows. （1) The residents of the less developed areas will benefit both from the improvement of the intra-region infrastructure of the less developed areas and/or of the inter-region infrastructure between the developed and the less developed ones. However, the mechanisms of the two policies are different. The policy of improving the infrastructure in the less developed areas has direct and indirect effects, both of which benefit the residents within it. The direct effect is more clearly visible in the rapid improvements in the infrastructure, while the indirect effect takes more time to be fully realized. This finding explains the common phenomenon of the low utilization of the infrastructure in the backward areas. The policy of improving inter-region infrastructure benefits the residents of the less developed areas through decreasing import cost. However, when the infrastructure in developed areas is better than that in less developed areas, this kind of policy will not only widen the regional gap as industries agglomerate around developed areas, but also widen regional income inequity. A new perspective for us to consider the relationship between industrial agglomeration and regional gap is that the industrial agglomeration caused by the infrastructure differences between developed areas and less developed ones may to some extent account for the widening income gap. （2) The residents of the less developed areas will benefit from the improvement of the infrastructure as industries spread to these areas, while the residents of the developed ones may enjoy fewer welfare benefits. There is high probability that this kind of policy may cut down the total social welfare benefits when both the industrial-size gap and the infrastructure gap between regions are significant. This finding has significant implications for the central government in making policies for regional coordination. If coordinated regional development is a long term target of the central government, early investment in the infrastructure in the less developed areas is vital. If the investment is delayed until considerable gap develops between regions, an overall efficiency loss may occur and the economic development in the earlier stages will be greatly hampered. （3) The main policy implication of this paper is that the optimal policy of the central government to improve the infrastructure depends on the initial levels of industrial sizes and infrastructure of the two regions. When the size difference between regional economies is small, when the trade barriers between regions are high, and when the less developed areas have significant investment cost advantage in improving the intra-region infrastructure, the central government should choose to invest in the infrastructure in less developed areas to maximize the total social welfare. One limitation of this study is that we only assume the public expenditure on infrastructure to be exogenous. In more general and realistic situations, local governments actually rely on tax revenue to finance infrastructure investments. One interesting extension would be to introduce tax policy into our model in order to better explain the strategic behaviors of local governments and their impact on industrial agglomeration and economic development.

In regional economic development, why are the Chinese local governments’ roles so different? Applying the quantitative method, we have compared the nominees of the five China Local Government Innovation Awards (2001-2010) and analyzed the inter-regional, inter-category and cross-year data of these nominees to probe into the correlation between the economic growth and the local government innovations in the eastern, central and western regions of China. The number of innovations of the local governments in the eastern region is far above that in the western and the central regions, and the number is greater in the urban area than in the rural area, both of which indicate the relationship between innovative ideas and economic growth. There is a significant inter-regional difference in the innovation types. The eastern region, with a higher level of economic development, centers around administrative innovations to meet the demand of market institutional development. One strong incentive to the political innovation in this region is economy. At the same time, its public service innovation is more effective than that in the western and the central regions. The central region has more political innovations; however, the governments in the western region show greater vitality in all kinds of innovations than the central region. Correlation Analysis has testified the significance of correlation between the administrative innovation and the economic growth. We also find that with economic development the local government innovations have gradually switched from political reform to administrative management, but attention has not sufficiently been paid to public service innovations. Therefore, the regional economic growth gives the local governments an endogenous incentive to innovate and there is more vitality in innovation in the developed areas than the undeveloped ones. On one hand, government innovations have greatly promoted the local economic development and regional marketization process and provided the necessary local experiences for the overall economic institutional reform. On the other hand the local government innovation becomes the crucial element for Chinese government innovation. The policy implication of this research for Chinese social transformation is that the state government should ensure greater policy incentive and leave institutional space for local government innovations in their regional development. China’s central government should set up an overall and top-down system of power decentralization and provide the institutional incentive for local governments to implement public service and political innovations. At the same time, the central government should put stress on local innovative autonomy which generates the ability to solve local problems. China cannot rely on the local economic development alone for its innovation incentive. Rather, it must push for the reform of political decentralization so as to guarantee the central authority and local autonomy.