Estimation On Total Factor Productivity And Analysis On Its Influential Factors Of Yangtze River Delta

Since reform and opening, China's economy has maintained rapid growth. But many researchers think that China has not transformed its economic growth from extensive pattern to intensive pattern and high energy consumption, low output, high input, low efficiency also can not be ignored in the process of China's economic growth.Total factor productivity (TFP) is a good view-point for the study of economic growth pattern. In this paper, we choose 16 cities in the Yangtze River Delta as the object of this study because this economic region occupies an important position in the national economic development and has a high speed on the economic growth. We choose Total Factor Productivity as a view-point for the study of economic growth pattern and use Panel Data Model to analyze the factors which may affect the TFP growth.At first, this study uses Malmquist-DEA method to estimate TFP growth of these cities, and finds that:during 1997-2009, TFP has not been significantly improved in Yangtze River Delta and the average annual TFP growth rate is only 0.2%.In 2008 and 2009 TFP has two consecutive years of negative growth. The difference between the average annual TFP growth rates in 16 cities is obvious. Shanghai is the city which gets the highest TFP growth rate (7.1%).Besides Shanghai, the TFP growth rates of the rest 15 cities need to be improved.About the contribution to economic growth of TFP, Shanghai is the highest and its contribution rate is 62.10%.The second highest is Suzhou and its contribution rate is 29.98%.The contribution rate of TFP growth in the rest cities is less than 10% and even negative in some cities. On the whole, the main source of the Yangtze River Delta economic growth is still the factor input. Then, this study uses Panel Data Model to analyze the factors which may affect the TFP growth of Yangtze River Delta and finds investment on R&D,FDI, speed of economic development, public finance expenditure, export and the proportion of the secondary industry are the key factors. Besides, we also find R&D, FDI and speed of economic development can improve the TFP growth significantly and optimize the economic growth pattern.Based on the result, this study gives some policy suggestion to improve the TFP growth of Yangtze River Delta and optimize the economic development.