China’s commuting-based metropolitan areas

Using commuting flows derived from cellphone location data at fine geographical levels, this paper presents the first delineation of China’s commuting-based metropolitan areas (MAs). The size distribution of those MAs follows a power law, with larger MAs hosting more skilled workers, more productive firms, and offering higher wage premiums. China’s commuting-based MAs exhibit a few notable features compared to several other large countries. First, commutes are short in both time and distance and rarely cross administrative boundaries. Second, China’s MAs are small relative to the size of the country, with MA sizes highly correlated with the administrative hierarchy. We discuss existing policies that may have contributed to these characteristics. We demonstrate that commuting-based MAs differ substantively from other definitions of Chinese cities. The commuting-based MAs provide a valuable tool for researchers who need to define Chinese cities as local labor markets but are limited by the availability of official delineations.