Study Of Industry Structure Convergence In The Northwestern Provinces

Regional industry structure is the proportion and relationship of different industry segments within a region or a country. It plays an important role in determining the efficiency and effectiveness of a country or region's economy. Since 1980's, regional industry structure similarity has attracted great interests among researchers and resulted in many theoretical and empirical studies. However, most studies deem regional industry structure similarity a negative phenomenon and believe that it should be diminished. In fact, regional industry structure similarity is inevitable in some certain periods of economic development. While recognizing the negative effects of such a phenomenon on economic development, one should also realize its positive effects.In this dissertation, we first review existing studies of regional industry structure similarity, define regional industry structure and industry structure similarity, and fix the subjects of the present study and our primary interests. Then we briefly recall the origin of industry structure theory, industry classification, industry development, and industry structure evolution, and industry structure adjustment and recognize the guiding role they play in regional industry development, and explain the positive effects that a suitable industry structure have on regional economic developmentIn the second part, using the past ten-years's data on the 25 industries in the five western provinces, we first inspect industry structure similarity using industry output ratios and we find the top ten industries are quite similar and concentrate on resource industries. Then applying the ratio of industry structure similarity, we quantize leading industries by hoffman coefficient and show that the structure of light and heavy industries are similar. After doing the authentic research by using the industry structure similarity coefficient, we can find the industry structures become more convergence. Furthermore, the analytical results by quotient of location reveal that specialization in the five western provinces are mainly primarily on resources of petroleum and natural gas and coal, and industry structures are more similar. Based on the results obtained in Chapter 4, we apply alpha and beta similarity hypothesis test to study industry structure similarities. Our results show textile industries, metalwork industries, communication equipment, computer, and other electronics industries, petroleum refinement and nuclear fuel industries, and petroleum and natural gas exploration industries, and chemical industries, and electronic equipment industries have a trend of convergence while paper industry, transportation equipment industry are more diverse.At the end we discuss the underlying mechanism of industry structure convergence. We point out that industry structure convergence is inevitable form the underlying factors that lead to and affect such a phenomenon. We discuss the positive and negative effects of industry structure convergence on economic development, from both theoretical and empirical perspectives.