Time-Space Evolution Of Chinese Urban Economic Growth Quality

Under the background of the reform and opening-up policy,China has experienced a rapid urban economic growth with the advancing of national Innovation-Driven strategy.It marched into an important transformation stage since the conditions which supported the macroeconomic growth have been changed.These changes require economic growth pattern transform from quantity-velocity type to a quality-benefit type,from factor-driving to innovation-driving.How to develop and increase Chinese urban growth quality becomes of the most concerned at present.This is also the starting point and basement of this research.Centered on the main topic of Chinese urban economic growth quality,this paper tried to establish an assessment indicator system to evaluate the urban economic growth quality base on the connotation and characteristic of urban economic growth quality,to reveal the time-space evolution regularity and the causes of formation.This paper consists of three levels: the first level is to establish an assessment indicator system to evaluate the urban economic growth quality base on its connotation and characteristic.289 Chinese prefecture cities' economic growth quality was measured by means of Principal Component Analysis and general statistical descriptions.The night time lights were used to verify the urban economic growth quality data to increase the reliability of the empirical analysis of the following time-space evolution.On the second level,time-space evolution was carried on from the cross-sectional,time series and spatial dimensions.Nonparametric Kernel Density estimation was used to investigate the distribution evolution of the urban economic growth quality from the time dimension.Monte Carlo simulations were carried on to fulfill the robustness checks of our conclusions.Variable coefficient,Theil index,Herfindahl-Hirschman index and Gini coefficient were used to estimate the difference of urban economic growth quality.Both general convergence and spatial convergence were conducted in the convergence analysis part.Spatial econometric methods including spatial correlation and heterogeneity analysis were used to describe the spatial feature of the prefecture cities' economic growth quality.On the third level,the conclusions were reexamined by the prefecture cities' data of Guangdong Province and causes were explained.As a representative city of the Innovation-Driven phase,Shenzhen was chosen as a case analysis.At the end of this paper,spatial panel models were used to investigate the correlation between innovation input and urban economic growth quality.The thesis includes five chapters: introduction and literature review,establishment and verification of the assessment indicator system,time and spatial evolution of the urban economic growth quality,empirical research of urban economic growth quality of Guangdong Province and the conclusions.The main conclusions are listed as follows:?.Chinese prefecture cities' economic growth quality appeared a parallel growth from the time dimension.Chinese urban economic growth quality has experienced an overall increasing trend from the year 2000 to 2013,the time evolution has showed a Single-Peaked feature of parallel growth over the years and urban economic growth quality didn't show a polarized feature among cities of different scales.?.Chinese prefecture cities' economic growth quality showed spatial agglomeration and heterogeneity.Spatial agglomeration and regional heterogeneity have been found as the spatial features.It showed a ‘high East and low West' regional difference which coastal cities have gained relatively higher urban economic growth quality than the cities in the Middle and the West of our country.From the results of Guangdong empirical analysis,the cities of Guangdong Province have the higher difference than the average level of the national wide cities and appeared a ‘Core-Periphery' distribution of the economic growth quality which centered on Shenzhen,Dongguan and Guangzhou and decreased progressively towards periphery.?.Interaction and spatial effects existed in the correlation between innovation input and urban economic growth quality.Spatial panel models investigated correlation between innovation input and urban economic growth quality of Guangdong Province.The results are as follows: innovation input should be paralleled which means the interaction of capital and manpower that provide positive contribution to the economic growth quality should be considered.Spatial effects should also be taken into account since the behavior of the neighboring city government on the innovation input has an impact on urban economic growth quality.The above conclusions will enrich the urban economic growth theory of the urban economics and provide powerful evidence to explore the effective path to elevate Chinese urban economic growth quality.The innovation points were firstly reflected in the establishment of the assessment indicator system of the urban growth quality.There is no existed standard for the macro-economic growth topic that we focused on.Based on the domestic and overseas researches,we summarized the reference standard and an adaptable frame for the evaluation of urban growth quality which matched the present economic stage of our country.Secondly,the contents of this thesis have broken through the analysis frame of the general economic growth theory.It also has brought time-space evolution into our research frame to investigate the urban economic growth quality from diverse dimensions that made our study a higher degree of explanation.Finally,the objective night time lights were used to verify the effectiveness of the calculated urban economic growth quality data and to confirm the validity of our assessment indicator system.It made the following space-time evolution research and our conclusions more convincing.Nonparametric estimation,Monte Carlo simulation,spatial convergence analysis and spatial panel model were used in the analysis.The usage of these empirical research methods deepened the understanding of Chinese urban growth quality regularities beyond the general economic theory.