Research On Chinese Regional Income Disparity In The Open Economy

From 1978 to 2008,China has experienced high speed economic growth for thirty years.The average income level has been improved greatly.However,unbalanced economic growth increased Chinese regional income disparity.For this reason, convergence and determination of Chinese regional income become one of the important issues in Chinese economics study.The debate that whether factor accumulation or total factor productivity(TFP) is the main origin of Chinese regional income disparity is one of the hottest issues.The famous American economist Paul Kruguman's paper on "Asia's miracle" pushes the debate to summit.Research on this issue can explain china's pattern of economic development.And the conclusions also have important policy implication for economic catch-up and the reduction of regional disparity.For this reason this dissertation gives a systematic research on the distribution,trend and determination of Chinese regional output per labor.The dissertation includes nine chapters.Chapter one introduce research background, implication and methodological issues.Chapter two give literature review.Chapter three use kernel density function and first order Markov process dynamic distribution approach to study the dynamic distribution and trends of output per labor and its relations to capital accumulation and TFP.The results show most Chinese provinces convergent to high income end.And TFP is the major factor that determinate the Chinese regional disparity. In chapter four,we analyze the contributions of factor accumulation and TFP to Chinese regional income disparity with standard accounting approach.The results confirm that TFP explains most of-the regional income disparity.In chapter five we decompose output per labor into factor accumulation,technology progress and technological efficiency with a nonparametric approach known as Data Envelop Analysis(DEA).The results indicate that all the three factors are important determinants of Chinese regional income disparity. The results also show that technology progress is correlated with factor endowments.In Chapter six we further decompose TFP growth into efficiency change(includes pure efficiency change and scale efficiency change) and technology progress change to analyze its composition's contribution to Chinese regional disparity with DEA-Malmquist index approach.We find that technology progress is the main origin of TFP growth.The contribution of efficiency is comparatively small.However,efficiency changes are clearly marked with regional differences.Chapter seven checks the determinants of TFP in open economy with a dynamic panel data model.Among the compositions of human capital,only tertiary educated human capital accelerates TFP growth.We also find that import and domestic R&D are positively correlated with TFP.However,no evidence shows that foreign direct investment(FDI) promotes TFP growth.Among possible absorptive capability variables such as human capital composition,domestic R&D,income level and comprehensive technology level,only comprehensive technology level promote technology diffusion through trade.Chapter eight goes further to check the determinants of output per labor. Our results indicate import promote the growth of output per labor.Among human capital compositions,only tertiary educated human capital have a significant positive relation with output per labor.Although there some evidences that FDI promote the growth of output per labor,the effects are much weak.We also find that governmental expenditure and capital investment accelerate Chinese economy.The checks for absorptive capability variables such as human capital compositions,income level and economic openness show that both trade and FDI have independent effects for output per labor from these three variables.Chapter nine concludes and gives some suggestions for further research.