The Impact Of Market Forces, Government Capacity And Natural Resource Abundance On The Urbanization Level In Northwest China

Urbanization development is an important impetus for increased productivity and economic growth. It is also an important way to narrow the gap between different regional economy. China is now at a stage of accelerated urbanization. There is a huge difference between the western region and the eastern region in the level of urbanization development, and it roots in the different driving forces of urbanization and its mechanism of action between different regions. Studies have found that the driving force of urbanization development in eastern region shows the main features of the market-oriented, while the urbanization in the central and western region are still dependent on the government to allocate resources. In this paper, we establish a dynamic panel model a fixed effects model to examine the impact of market level, government capacity and resource-dependent development on the urbanization level in Northwest from a point of the subject of resource allocation in urbanization development, using the provincial and prefecture-level city of two-level panel data, and We use the system GMM estimate method to solve endogenous. This paper will focus on the following three research questions:(1) how market level effects the urbanization in the Northwest?(2) what role does the government ability play in the process of urbanization in the Northwest?(3) what impact has happened of the extensive mode of economic development on urbanization in the Northwest? Research on this topic broadens the research perspective of the urbanization driving force for the less developed areas, and the research results will provide theoretical and empirical support for the developing areas to promote urbanization, economic development, and reduce regional gap. The main content and the conclusions of this paper as followings:Firstly, because of the industry structure in northwest has not been significantly optimize and upgrade and urbanization development mostly rely on the resource-exploitation industry, so the Industrial Development has a limited effect on pulling urbanization. At the same time, the convergence is not tight enough between large, medium and small cities in size and function in Northwest, which affects the urban-agglomeration effect and the improving of industrial agglomeration degree, and then restricting the positive role industrialization played on urbanization.Secondly, based on a dynamic panel model, we found that the role that market level plays in promoting the development of urbanization in Northwest is relatively weak compared with other areas in China. In other words, market forces does not play a dominant role in the development process of urbanization. The degree of market level is not high in Northwest contribute to this result.Thirdly, the provincial and prefecture-level city of two-level panel data are used to build a dynamic panel model. The empirical results show that, unlike the driving forces of urbanization in eastern region, the government capacity plays an important role in promoting the process of urbanization in Northwest. Specific performance are as following:(1) compared with other areas in China, government revenue capacity plays a stronger role in promoting the process of urbanization in Northwest, while the ability of government basic public services plays a relatively weak role.(2)based on the prefecture-level city of panel data, empirical analysis find that the ability of government basic public services and the government revenue capacity have a significant role in promoting the urbanization development.Fourthly, we build the provincial and the prefecture-level city panel data to analyze the correlation between the resource-dependent development pattern and the level of urbanization in this paper, considering that almost one-third of cities in Northwest are resource-dependent. The results show that there is also a "resource curse" effect in the process of urbanization development in Northwest. Compared with the rest of the country, resources industry in Northwest has a weaker role in promoting the process of urbanization and even for the negative effects.At the same time, energy consumption and the rate of urbanization in Northwest have a significant positive correlation, and energy consumption has a greater impact on the urbanization of land than the urbanization of the population. It means that the resource-dependent and the high-energy consumption development pattern is an important driving force to promote the urbanization of land.and the extensive development pattern is the main characteristic of urbanization development in northwest China.Finally, the author summarizes the research, and proposes related policy suggestions and the approach for further research.