Influence of Economic and Financial Openness in Urban Agglomerations of Major Bay Areas

This paper examines how four indicators of economic/financial openness, namely, trade openness, actual tariff rate, financial openness, and investment openness have shaped the world’s four major bay area’s urban agglomerations. The study considers four key bay areas, New York, Tokyo, San Francisco and Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao, over the period 2005–2018. Using the panel data fixed effect model analysis, our study finds that: the interaction of comprehensive openness, investment openness, trade openness and comprehensive openness plays a positive role in economic growth, while the actual tariff rate and financial openness play a negative role. In the long run, each bay area should expand their opening-up to the outside world and promote economic growth.