Regional Economic Growth In China Research Articles

Intensity of economic relationships: a spatial econometric analysis of regional economic growth in China

Intensity of economic relationships: a spatial econometric analysis of regional economic growth in China

Production factor changes, spatial spillovers, and regional economic growth in China

Production factor changes, spatial spillovers, and regional economic growth in China

Reexamining the Impact of Global Value Chain Participation on Regional Economic Growth: New Evidence Based on a Nonlinear Model and Spatial Spillover Effects with Panel Data from Chinese Cities

This study utilizes panel data drawn from 239 Chinese cities, and it employs fixed-effects models, mediation models, and spatial spillover models to reexamine the actual impact of the global value chain’s (GVC) participation on regional economic growth. The findings reveal that this impact exhibits a U-shaped nonlinear pattern, with the turning point of GVC occurring at 0.45, which is higher than that of 222 cities. Most cities are on the left side of the U-shaped curve, which corresponds with the second stage of the “in-out-in-again” GVC participation pattern (i.e., the “out” stage). During this stage, a decline in foreign value-added ratio (FVAR), with regard to exports (accompanied by an increase in the domestic value-added ratio), promotes economic growth. Innovation capability acts as a mediator in the relationship between GVC participation and economic growth. Furthermore, GVC participation has significant spillover effects on neighboring cities, with siphon and spillover effects coexisting. Thus, China should focus on establishing domestic value chains and innovation systems, achieving relative independence from existing GVCs dominated by developed countries, enhancing indigenous innovation capabilities, and laying the foundation for the third stage (in-again) of reintegration into GVCs, at the high value-added end, to achieve a higher level of openness. This study explores the nonlinear impact of GVC participation on regional economic growth in China from both theoretical and empirical perspectives, focusing on the finest divisions that remain feasible—cities. This approach expands and supplements the relevant field of research in valuable ways, yielding more realistic research conclusions and policy recommendations.

How does Financial Development Affect Regional Economic Growth in China? A Mediating Role of Industrial Structure Optimization

<p style="text-align: justify;">Financial development and industrial structure optimization are two-wheeled engines for promoting high-quality development, but the causal identification of the two is still poorly understood. This paper addresses this research gap by comprehensively analyzing the relationship between them. Regional economic growth is a necessary condition for achieving high-quality development. Taking China as an example, this study empirically examines the role of financial development and industrial structure optimization in high-quality development using the entropy method, fixed effects, mediation effects and instrumental variable regression. The study results show that (i) financial development has actively promoted regional economic growth. (ii) The driving effect on the central and western regions is greater than that on the eastern region. (iii) There are differences in the mediating effect of industrial structure optimization and rationalization between different levels of financial development and economic growth. (iv) In addition, the mediating effect of industrial structure optimization is larger in the eastern region than in the central and western regions. (v) The mediating effect of industrial structure rationalization is not obvious in the eastern region, but has a masking effect in the central and western regions. Our findings provide new strategies for financial development and industrial structure optimization in developing countries.</p>

Explaining and modeling the impact of industrial co-agglomeration on regional economic growth in China: integrated a quality concern of night-time light perspective.

The double-wheel drive of manufacturing industries and producer services industries is one of the key pathways to promote high-quality development relying on a modern industrial system. This paper explores the impacts of industrial co-agglomeration on regional economic growth in China with systematic consideration of static, dynamic, and spatio-temporal perspectives based on panel data for 285 prefecture-level cities from 2003 to 2020, employing the consolidated night-time light data. The empirical results show that industrial co-agglomeration significantly accelerates regional economic growth, especially high-tech intensity producer services industries, information industries, and finance industries. In addition, its spatial spillover effects are evidently established, which are characterized by cyclic accumulative, feedback features, and distance attenuation. Carrying out robustness tests, the preliminary regression results are verified. The heterogeneous influences are established across cities with different geographical locations, innovation capacities, and resource endowments. The further mechanism analysis indicates that industrial upgrading, technological progress, and efficiency enhancements account for the main channels for a sharp promotion in regional economic growth over the sample period. Furthermore, the government moderates this process more significantly than market forces do, especially when it comes to macroexogenous shocks that are regulated by the government. The findings of this study recommend policymakers to give full play to the positive externalities of industrial co-agglomeration and accelerate the industrial co-agglomeration process in a reasonable manner, so as to promote high-quality economic growth in China.

Impact of Financial Agglomeration on Regional Economic Growth in China: A Spatial Correlation Perspective

In the contemporary world, finance is crucial to economy and financial agglomeration has a lasting effect on the economic growth. The areas of financial agglomeration will influence the economy of the local parts throughout agglomeration effect, and have an impact on its spatially related parts. Based on Chinese inter-provincial panel data from 2007 to 2018, this study constructs an indicator system of financial agglomeration and measures provincial agglomeration levels to examine its impact on regional economic growth. The results show that, first, the level of financial agglomeration has a trend of steady change and presents a ladder-decreasing agglomeration pattern. Second, financial agglomeration could effectively promote the economic growth of local and spatially related regions. The development of the financial industry depended more on geographical distance, and the diffusion effect of financial agglomeration in the eastern, central, and western regions are in different stages. Finally, by summarizing the research conclusions, this study put forward some suggestions for China’s regional economic growth.

Environmental Regulation, Environmental Knowledge Spillover, and Regional Economic Growth in China: An Empirical Test Based on the Spatial Durbin Model

Considering the evolution of the spatial pattern of regional economic growth in China, this paper analyzes whether environmental regulation (ER) and environmental knowledge spillover (EKS) contribute to regional economic growth using panel data and the spatial Durbin model of China’s 31 provinces and cities from 2005 to 2020. The findings indicate that (1) there are significant characteristics of economic agglomeration in the spatial distribution of economic growth in China’s different provinces and cities according to the Moran’s index; (2) the environmental regulation has a nonlinear “U”-shaped effect on the regional economic growth, which is first suppressed and then promoted, and the spatial effect presents the same “U” shape as that of the local effect; (3) the environmental knowledge spillover, as measured by the number of green patents, shows a positive contribution on the economic growth and is significantly active in terms of both the local spillover and inter-regional spillover; (4) Eastern China enjoys a larger ER dividend than the central and western regions, and EKS shows a significant positive contribution to economic growth in the eastern, central, and western regions; (5) other factors also influence the regional economic growth besides the core explanatory variables, including the research and development expenditure (RD), human capital (Edu), urbanization level (Urb), government intervention (Gov), and opening-up level (Open), all of which show a positive effect on the economic growth, whereas the science and technology expenditure (Ti) has not played a positive role in promoting economic growth.

The growth impact of infrastructure capital investment: the role of regional innovation capacity—evidence from China

To verify the impact mechanism between infrastructure capital investment and regional economic growth in China, this study first estimates production capital stocks of the infrastructure by Perpetual Inventory Method (PIM) based on a balanced panel dataset for 31 Chinese provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities covering 1993–2017, then analyses the important mediating role of regional innovation capacity in the relationship between infrastructure capital investment and regional economic growth in China. The empirical results indicate that infrastructure capital investment can effectively promote economic growth in China. Furthermore, through analysing the mediating impact mechanism, the infrastructure capital investment can indirectly affect regional economic growth through the regional innovation capacity. When fully considering the potential heterogeneity, the mediating effect of developed regions is more significant than that of underdeveloped regions, and such a mediating effect is increasing with deepening industrialization. Therefore, a harmonious relationship between infrastructure capital investment and economic growth can be achieved if policymakers attempt to arouse the positive mediating role of regional innovation capacity when formulating relevant policies.

Study on spatial evolution and mechanism of county economic differences in Hubei province from 2005 to 2020

The spatial distribution pattern of the economic development among counties is an important external representation of a balanced and sustainable regional development in China. With the rapid development of globalization and localization, spatial pattern of economic growth is increasingly obvious. The mechanisms of regional economic growth in China are also gradually gaining attention. However, there is still a lack of research at the province and county levels. As a result, based on the per capita GDP of each county in Hubei province from 2005 to 2020 as the research index, the spatial autocorrelation and the spatial variation function are used to analyze the spatial pattern evolution and the county economy mechanism in Hubei province. The results show that 1) there is a remarkable phenomenon of county-level economic spatial agglomeration in Hubei province. The urban area of Wuhan and its surrounding counties are high–high (HH-type) county agglomeration areas. The low–low (LL-type) counties are mainly distributed in the western parts of Hubei province and scattered in the northeastern and southern parts of Hubei province; 2) the county economy of Hubei province presents a spatial distribution pattern of “high in the east and low in the west.” The hot areas of the county economy are primarily located in the urban area of Wuhan and its surrounding areas. In the process of development, the hot spot areas tend to shift to Yichang, Jingmen, and Xiangyang. The cold spot areas are located on the edges of the western, northeastern, and southeastern areas of Hubei province; 3) the spatial continuity and self-organization of the county economic development are strengthened. The structural differentiation trend caused by spatial autocorrelation is also strengthened. The county economy is relatively balanced from the southeast to the northwest, and the spatial difference in economic development in other directions is increasing; and 4) the spatial evolution of county economic development in Hubei province is the result of the comprehensive effects of historical and cultural background, economic development, traffic location, and policy system, and the A-shaped point-axis structure is a reliable spatial structure for regional development in Hubei province.

The Spillover Effect of Labor Agglomeration on Regional Economic Growth

Under the background that China's labor force is decreasing and they can move freely, this paper selects the Spatial Doberman model with time-individual fixed effects to analyze and study the spatial spillover effect and its impact mechanism of the labor agglomeration of 31 provinces in mainland China from 2003 to 2018 on regional economic growth. It was found that in China, the increase in the concentration of labor in a region and surrounding areas can promote economic growth in the region through the increase in marketization and the decline in the dependency ratio. However, the current regional economic growth in China is manifested by the promotion of labor agglomeration in the region and the suppression of labor agglomeration in the surrounding areas.

Analysis on the Spatial Effect of Talent Supply of Vocational Education and Economic Growth of Tobacco Industry from the Perspective of Human Capital

Objectives: Human capital plays an important role in the economic growth of tobacco industry. Education is the direct way to form human capital. At the same time, vocational education is a part of the education system. Vocational education is mainly to cultivate skilled human capital. From the perspective of human capital, this paper studies the impact of talent supply of vocational education on tobacco economic growth. A combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis was used. This paper analyzes the current situation of talent supply of vocational education and tobacco economy in China. It also analyzes the correlation between talent supply of vocational education and tobacco economy. Based on the theoretical model of human capital economic growth. Establish the theoretical model of talent supply in vocational education and tobacco economic growth. Comprehensively consider the spatial interaction of economic growth. Using the spatial panel econometric model, this paper makes an empirical analysis on 29 provinces and cities in China. Use Geoda, MATLAB and other software for empirical calculation. The results show that the supply of vocational education talents and the growth of tobacco economy are on the rise. However, the regional distribution is uneven. And vocational education is positively correlated with tobacco economic growth. The empirical results show that the regional tobacco economic growth in China has negative spatial auto-correlation. Employment, lifetime number of vocational education and human capital level in the tobacco industry significantly promote the economic growth of the tobacco industry. The results provide a reference for the regulation of China's tobacco industry.

Government-driven urbanisation and its impact on regional economic growth in China

This article interrogates the role of local Chinese governors in government-driven urbanisation. This process often involves local governments converting rural land to urban land rather than local governments incentivising rural-to-urban migration. This study proposes a method to find a proxy variable of government-driven urbanisation and performs an exploratory study of its impact on economic growth. Its empirical analysis is based on provincial data from 1996 to 2015, a period of intense urbanisation in China. The results show that urbanisation has had various effects on growth across different provinces, and that some provinces exhibit a phenomenon called ‘urbanisation without growth’. This may be because local governors push urbanisation too heavy that it can hardly generate positive effects, such as external consumption, technology diffusion, and a larger pool of urban labour. This is similar to the phenomenon of over-urbanisation experienced in some developing countries. As a main driver of over-urbanisation, government-driven urbanisation has typical Chinese characteristics, but this paper's findings still have significant implications for other emerging economies.

Regional economic growth in China from a Kaldorian perspective: A comparative study of Nanjing and Suzhou

This paper sets out to analyse and compare the growth performances of two Chinese cities, Nanjing and Suzhou. Their growth performances have varied over time, with one city outperforming the other in some periods, and with the reverse scenario taking place in other times. In order to explain this phenomenon, this study makes use of a Kaldorian analytical framework, highlighting key notions such as demand-led growth, path-dependency, lock-in effects and inter-relatedness. It will be argued that regional economic growth is explained by the match – or otherwise – between a city’s productive structure and China’s national aggregate demand composition. JEL codes :P25; R11; N95 Download Online appendix

Spatial Effects and Nonlinear Analysis of Energy Consumption, Financial Development, and Economic Growth in China

Energy consumption is of great significance to the sustainable development of the economy. Due to the spatial heterogeneity of low-carbon growth in regional economies, the relationship between energy consumption and economic growth is complicated. However, a few researches have been published about spatial spillover effects and non-linearity of energy consumption and financial development on regional economic growth in China. Based on the panel data of 30 provinces in China from 2007 to 2017, this paper analyzes the spatial spillover effects and threshold effects of energy consumption and financial development on regional economic growth by using spatial and nonlinear econometric methods. The main conclusions are as follows. Spatial econometric methods show that financial development and energy consumption are two factors of production input to promote China’s economic growth. Meanwhile, energy consumption and financial development have spillover effects on regional economic growth. Additionally, the nonlinear econometric method finds that with increasing financial development, the impact of energy consumption on economic growth is segmented. Therefore, relevant policies should be implemented to enhance the role of finance in energy consumption to promote low-carbon growth of China’s economy.

On the joint impact of high-speed rail and megalopolis policy on regional economic growth in China

This paper quantifies multifold effects of megalopolis (MP) and high-speed railway (HSR) inaugurations on regional economic growth, in the context of MP and HSR development in China during 1996–2017. Three types of policy interventions are examined, i.e., MP inauguration, HSR introduction, and the joint intervention of MP and HSR. The difference-in-differences (DID) method is adopted to quantify these effects among different groups of prefecture-level cities in China. Specifically, we firstly examine the effects of MP and HSR inaugurations on prefectural economic output, respectively. The simultaneous and joint impact of MP and HSR is then estimated by examining the effect of their interaction. We find that while both MP inauguration and HSR induction have stimulating effects on regional economic growth, the effect of MP inauguration is dominating. Moreover, the joint intervention of MP and HSR is significantly larger than either MP or HSR, and even larger than the sum of two individual effects. Comparing the effects of HSR among different city groups, we find that MP cities are likely to benefit more from HSR service than those not in an MP. Among various MPs, the joint intervention tends to be associated with larger economic growth in MPs with better economic development foundations. These observations imply that the strategical and transport policy interventions have reinforcing effects on one another. However, the simultaneous impact may contribute to regional development disparity since the most developed regions may benefit more from the joint intervention by siphoning resources from disadvantaged regions. Overall, the results shed lights on the interactive developments of transportation infrastructure and urban agglomerations.

Transport Infrastructure Development and Economic Growth in China: Recent Evidence from Dynamic Panel System-GMM Analysis

China’s growth miracle has been accompanied by a great leap forward in the development of transport infrastructure. This study examines and compares impacts from the quantity, quality, and structural aspects of transport infrastructure on regional economic growth in China as the country approaches an upper-middle income status. We also incorporate government’s development strategies into the framework for evaluating the growth effect of China’s transport infrastructure. Using a consistent and robust dynamic panel data system generalized method of moments (system-GMM) estimation for identification, we find strong evidence confirming that transport infrastructure contributes to regional economic growth in China during the period 2007–2015, as the country approaches its upper-middle income status. In particular, quality improvements in roads and railways and the structural upgrading of transport infrastructure significantly contribute to growth. However, we do not find that quantity expansion of the overall land transport network has a significant impact. Moreover, government development strategies that defy local comparative advantages not only detract from the growth rate but also potentially restrict the contribution of transport infrastructure. Lastly, the regional heterogeneity for Western China may differ across transport modes, particularly with respect to goods versus passenger transport and roadways versus railways.

Local government debt and regional economic growth in China

Purpose With China’s economic growth slowing down and the growth rate of fiscal revenue decreasing, the pressure on local government debts is further increasing. Under this background, it is of great significance to clarify the relation between local government debts and China’s economic growth in order to give full play to the positive role of local debts in stabling growth. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach Therefore, this paper explores the impact of Chinese local government debt on economic growth from theoretical and empirical aspects, respectively, and compares the regional differences between different debts and economic growth dynamics. Findings In the theoretical model part, this paper constructs a three-sector dynamic game model, under the two circumstances of whether local government is subject to debt constraints, and examines the relation between local government debt and economic growth and other variables through numerical simulation. Research shows that when the government is not constrained by debt, there is an inverted “U” relation between government debt and economic growth. When the government is constrained by debt, the economic growth rate gradually decreases as the government debt increases. Originality/value In the theoretical analysis part, this paper tries to estimate the amount of local debts under different calibers and examines the impact of different types of local government debts on China’s economic growth and their regional differences. The results show that excessive accumulation of government hidden debts in the eastern region is not conducive to economic growth, while explicit debts in the central and western regions significantly contribute to local economic growth. The results of empirical analysis are basically consistent with the predictions of the theoretical model.

Bureaucratic integration and synchronization of regional economic growth: Evidence from China

We analyze the impact of the central-local bureaucratic relation on the synchronization of regional economic growth in China using pairwise panel data of 31 provincial-level administrative units (465 pairs) from 1993 to 2014. We identify a significant positive impact of bureaucratic integration (top provincial-level government officials who have served in the central government) on regional output synchronization. Results from the estimations of instrumental variable, generalized method of moments, and subsample remain robust. However, bureaucratic rotation (top provincial-level government officials with prior working experience in other province) has no effects on regional output synchronization.

The Effect of Local Government Debt on Regional Economic Growth in China: A Nonlinear Relationship Approach

By drawing on the concept of sustainable economic development, this study advances the research on debt sustainability in the economic literature. We explore the correlation between local government debt and regional economic growth in 30 provinces in China. Previous studies have established that the development of economic growth between regions is not independent and we, therefore, investigate the spatial effect of regional economic growth due to the existence of a spatial spillover effect or spatial expansion among regions. Using Moran’s scatter plot, a Local Indicator of Spatial Association (LISA) map, and a semiparametric spatial model (SE-SDM), our results demonstrate the following: (1) the spatial agglomeration effect has a significant influence on regional economic growth; (2) the relationship between local government debt and regional economic growth presents nonlinear characteristics, rather than having an inverted U-shaped relationship; (3) the semiparametric spatial model more accurately characterizes in the nonlinear relationship between local government debt and regional economic growth compared to a basic regression model and the spatial Durbin model; and (4) when the scale of local government debt exceeds a certain level, economic growth will be suppressed by the crowding-out of private investment and the reduction of public expenditure.

The Differentiated Influence of Technology Absorption on Regional Economic Growth in China

Technology absorption based on technology input–output is a main source of regional economic growth, and it can be one of the mechanisms to achieve regional sustainable development. In order to explore the influence mechanism and effects of regional technology absorption on economic growth, this paper classifies 30 provinces (including municipalities and autonomous regions) in China into technology input areas and technology output areas. With economic data from 2000 to 2016, this paper adopts the Hausman test and conducts an empirical study using regression analysis of fixed effect and random effect. The result shows that: (1) compared to technology output areas, technology absorption has a greater effect on economic growth in technology input areas; and (2) in general, all of these different types of technology transactions contribute to promoting regional economy. In technology output areas, the promoting effects of four different technology transactions on economic growth are sequenced from strong to weak as following: technology development, technology consultation, technology service, and technology transfer, while in the technology input areas, the promotion effect on economic growth from strong to weak is technology development, technology service, technology consultation, and technology transfer.