| China needs to accelerate the transformation of economic development pattern in the "new normal" and take economic efficiency as the goal to promote efficiency of the economic development, and finally achieve the efficiency-driven economic growth. In the process of economic globalization and trade liberalization,urban agglomeration is increasingly becoming the center of modern economic growth and the new regional unit in global competition and international industrial division.The urban agglomerations develop rapidly along with the steady progress of China's urbanization. The urban agglomerations will become the main body and platform of the national urbanization, the most dynamic and potential growth pole for China's economic development, and even the pillar of China's economic and social development in the future. At present, the economic development in urban agglomerations presents a higher efficiency on the whole, but meanwhile obvious discrepancies of the economic efficiency of different urban agglomerations exist.What is the source of economic efficiency of the urban agglomerations in China?Why there are significant differences among the economic efficiency of China's urban agglomerations?And how to improve the economic efficiency of the urban agglomerations in China?All these problems need to be solved urgently. Therefore, this dissertation constructs a theoretical analysis framework of the economic efficiency of the urban agglomeration and examines the main promotion way and influence factors of urban agglomeration's economic efficiency, then takes the ten top urban agglomerations in China as examples to do an empirical analysis. Finally, based on the prior findings, the dissertation discusses the way to promote the economic efficiency of China's urban agglomerations and provides several specific suggestions about it.Industrial division is the first main way to improve the economic efficiency of the urban agglomeration according to the classical economic and Marx's theories of the division of labor, Thunen's agricultural location theory, Weber's industrial location theory and Marshall's agglomeration economy theory.The industrial division of urban agglomeration will help optimize the economic resources allocation and make the urban agglomeration obtain better benefits of scale economy and agglomeration economy. Technical progress is the second main way to improve the economic efficiency of the urban agglomeration according to Neoclassical Economics' exogenous technical progress theory, New Growth Theory Economics'endogenous technical progress theory and Schumpeter's innovation theory.The technical progress of a single city and technical cooperation and spillover among cities in urban agglomeration and the technology inflow from outside will promote the technical progress of the urban agglomeration, and then promote its economic efficiency. According to the New Institutionalism Economics'new institutionalism theory, institution is the first main factors that influence the economic efficiency of the urban agglomeration. Infrastructure is the second main factors that influence the economic efficiency of the urban agglomeration according to Thunen's agricultural location theory, Weber's industrial location theory, Core periphery theory, Point axis development theory and "Iceberg" transport costs theory. Institutions and infrastructures of the urban agglomeration will affect its industrial division and technical progress, and then affect the economic efficiency.The combination of the two promotion ways and the two influence factors constitutes the theoretical explanation for the changing of economic efficiency of an urban agglomeration and the economic efficiency differences among urban agglomerations.The dissertation constructs a comprehensive measuring index system which consists of labor productivity, capital productivity, land productivity and total factor productivity and its decomposition to measure the economic efficiency of China's ten top urban agglomerations in 2001-2013. It demonstrates that the labor productivity and land productivity of the ten top urban agglomerations are rising steadily, while the capital productivity has entered into the stage of decline since 2008. Meanwhile, the economic efficiency differences among the ten top urban agglomerations are significant. The Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration is the highest in these years, the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration ranks the second, the economic performance of theBeijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration, one of the three national urban agglomerations is not very good, and ranks only in the middle level, and the Guanzhong and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomerations rank the last in the perieds.In addition, the economic efficiency of the ten top urban agglomerations reflects a "converging" trend.Building on the theoretical analysis framework, the empirical analysis indicates that the level of industrial division, technical progress, institutions and infrastructures of the ten top urban agglomerations are various, which are the main reason of the economic efficiency differences. Firstly, the measurement of industrial division, technical progress, institutions and infrastructures finds that the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta urban agglomerations present the highest efficiency in the four aspects, while the efficiency of the Guanzhong and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomerations is the worst. The other urban agglomerations' developments in the four aspects are very uneven, one aspect is good, while another is poor. Secondly, the econometric analysis has testified the promotion effects of the industrial division and technical progress and the influential effects of the institutions and infrastructures on the economic efficiency of the ten top urban agglomerations. To be specific, before the institutions and infrastructures variables of the urban agglomerations added to the regression model, the regression coefficients of the labor productivity and land productivity to the industrial division and technical progress variables of the ten top urban agglomerations are significant positive, but the coefficient of the technical progress variable is bigger than the industrial division variable. And the coefficient of the industrial division is significant under the confidence level of 10%; while the coefficient of the technical progress variable is significant under the confidence level of 1%, which means that the industrial division and the technical progress of the urban agglomerations are beneficial to their economic efficiency, but the contribution of technical progress factor is much bigger. And after the variables of institutions and infrastructures are added to the regression model, the regression coefficients of the labor productivity and land productivity to the industrial division, technical progress, institutions and infrastructures variables of the ten top urban agglomerations are significant positive, but the coefficients of the industrial division and technical progress variables become smaller in different level, which means that the institutions and infrastructures of the urban agglomerations "diluted" the contributions of the industrial division and technical progress. Especially in the regression model of the labor productivity, the coefficients of the industrial division and technical progress variables reduced significantly by 50% basically. It also finds that the technical progress variable affects the economic efficiency of the urban agglomerations most before the institutions and infrastructures variables are added to the model, while the largest influence factor turns to be the institutions variables after the institutions and infrastructures variables added to the model. The capital productivity index failes to pass the relevant empirical test, and can't be used as an effective indicators of the economic efficiency into the empirical analysis.Based on the theoretical and enpirical analysis, the dissertation suggests that it is necessary to promote the synergetic and integrative development of the urban agglomeration in order to promote its economic efficiency in China. All the cities of the urban agglomeration should adjust the industrial layout together, and deepen the industrial division and cooperation. Every city needs to strengthen the technical cooperation and sharing with others, so as to promote the technical progress of the urban agglomeration jointly.The institutions of the urban agglomeration should be reformed and innovated further, providing institutional guarantee for the synergetic and integrative development of the urban agglomeration. All the cities should work together to promote the infrastructure constructions of the urban agglomeration, and increase the connectivity among cities. |
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