Research on Efficiency of China's Regional Knowledge-Based Economy

Abstract

Bused on analyzing the kernel of knowledge-based economy, by using the DEA model it is evaluated the knowledge-based economy efficiency of every province or city in China. The results reveal that all provinces or cities in China have higher scale efficiency and lower pure technical efficiency, and as a whole are in the stage of increasing returns to scale. The middle areas have a small distance behind the east areas in efficiency, and the west areas are remarkably dropped behind. From regulation of investment elements, capital efficiency and information resource efficiency are relatively higher, but labor efficiency is relatively lower. The optimal production function (Cobb-Douglas function), obtained from the estimation based on provinces or cities with higher technical efficiency, shows capital elasticity is highest, information resource elasticity is higher and labor is relatively inelastic, and China economy as a whole is now in the stage of increasing returns to scale. There is still great space for elevating knowledge-based economy efficiency, and primary ways are to increase technical efficiency and to better use of information resource.