Abstract: By using a new economic geography model of multi-region to study the impact of market scale on spatial economic structure, we find that the home market effect plays a key role in it. At different development periods, under external shocks such as transportation costs and so on, industry shares will change due to the distribution of market scale. The spatial economic structure will gradually evolve into such forms as single core or dual-core structure, especially “central collapse” will be found in the process. Such results can be used to analyze the practical problems, including the “central collapse” in the east, central and west regions of China, the structure of city clusters, etc.. With the rapid development of transportation infrastructures, China will form a variety of development patterns on different spatial scales owing to home market effect. The regional convergence can be reached through reducing the economic distance and promoting agglomerative economies, which will help achieve regional coordinated development.

Key words: new economic geography; home market effect; market scale; multi-zone model; spatial economic structure