Impacts Of Rural Public Investment On Urban-rural Economic Integration

As an important guideline of China's social development strategy, urban-rural economic integration demands gradual achievement of fair and open economic environment;optimization division of productivity and joint share of development fruits between urban and rural areas, through promoting elements reasonable flow and in accordance with the objective laws of urban-rural economic relations evolution. The achievement of these goals depends on not only the role of market, but also the regulation of public policy. As an important means of economic development, public investment can compellingly possess some social resources and redistribute them according to development priorities and strategic direction, backed by State institutions' power, so that it can directly increase the targets' benefits and their indirect ability to acquire wealth. Following this logic, with characteristics of mainly covering rural areas, supporting agriculture and farmers ' development, rural public investment will certainly be able to stimulate rural endogenous development to some extent,and bridge the economic gap between urban and rural areas, and then realize urban-rural integration. Interpretation of the above logical deduction and further theory excavation is the main objective of this study.There is rich theoretic research about two comprehensive concepts: public investment and urban-rural economic integration, but most of them were around one and little touch upon their relationship. In some studies involving both concepts, public investment(or public service ? public welfare) integration and urban-rural economic integration were usually regarded as two evaluation index of urban-rural integration. But actually the former is a cause-revealing index of urban-rural unbalanced development; the latter is a result-displaying one. This research model confusing causes and results masked and blurred the inherent logical relationship which needs to be clear while studying the urban-rural integration.Testing this internal logic relation is also the starting point of this paper.Based on the definition and indicator system construction of two economic terms:urban-rural economic integration and rural public investment which host potential logic relation, it was deduced that the inner mechanism of rural public investment on urban-ruraleconomic integration from different perspectives. Furthermore, the comprehensive effect,structural effect and efficiency of rural public investment on urban-rural integration were explored. Finally, based on the international experience, our rural public investment policies in the process of economic integration were discussed.The following founds and conclusions were got around above research content:?,the technology progress-effect, capital accumulation-effect, human capital improvement-effect and trade efficiency promotion-effect generated by rural public investment are all important drivers to enhance rural area endogenous development with docking city outside helping power; the theory model derivation within the binary analysis framework also fully proved this opinion.?, in the integrated effect analysis of rural public investment on urban-rural economic integration, the empirical analysis with introduction of control variables testified the forward,significant effects of rural public investment. Results also show that two control variables, "urban bias" and "non-agricultural preference " reflecting the characteristics of urbanization and industrialization in China hampered urban-rural economic integration process to some extent.?,the structure analysis using subjective index system clearly showed the importance of rural human capital investment and rural industry efficiency improvement investment;analysis also showed that urban-rural industry integration is the core of economic integration,and only with industry fusion and docking achieved, the life and consumption gap between urban and rural areas will constantly be narrowed.?, empirical results of a social input-output model using rural public investment and urban-rural economic integration as prototype showed that inefficiency problems did exist in most provinces while using rural public investment to promote urban-rural economic integration; Inefficient reasons were not inadequate investment scale, but serious dissipation and low administrative efficiency. Considering the DEA model is a closed black box with its efficiency is completely decided by inner free inputs and outputs, and cannot take “outside environment” into consideration, so a further empirical analysis aiming at explore exogenous environment's effects on upper efficiency result using Tobit model was carried out. Results showed that urbanization, industrialization based on agricultural development and growth could effectively improve the efficiency of public investment in rural areas, but the "shallow urbanization" characterized by reducing agricultural population and distorted industrialization characterized by eradicating agriculture industry damaged public investment efficiency in rural areas.?, through a personality list, as well as common induction of foreign countries public investment practice in rural areas under the guidance of urban-rural integration, generalrevelation was found that rural public investment policy must be compatible with the periodic features of economic integration, must cover all aspects of urban-rural economic relations and take rural area's endogenous development as a basic starting point.VI, the rural public investment policy adjustment suggestions within the process of economic integration should include: take core towns as rural public investment carriers;take industry as an investment breakthrough; attach importance to the rural environment and resource protection investment; improve investment efficiency; rationally determine investment priorities according to the stage and regional differences of economic integration.