An Empirical Study On The Provincial Economic Convergence In China

Since 1978,China has experienced 20 years' high speed economic growth,it called "miracle of China." But the development is unbalanced,and the widening of regional gap has become one of the biggest challenges that influence the sustainable development.The research of regional gap is important to theory and practice.This dissertation studied the inner reason of the convergence or divergence fact of China's regional economic growth in the period 1978-2004,the research is mainly based on the analysis of the mechanism of convergence.Firstly,on the basis of the hypothesis of growth convergence,choosing the data of GDP per capita,I analyzedσconvergence among the province and three big regions of east,middle and west.I found that the gap of provincial GDP per capita is growing gradually.Second,I analyzedβconvergence among the province and three big region of east, middle and west.I found that the absolute convergence was not exist in the long-run trend of regional economic growth among provinces in china from 1978 to 2004.The market mechanism can't lessen the economic gap by itself,the adjustment and control of regional economy by central government is indispensable.Club convergence obviously exists in the economic growth in China.The empirical study showed that there are economic growth among provinces in the three big regions of the east,the middle,and the west.Furthermore,in three big convergence clubs,there are small convergence clubs which in the second or third hierarchy in the three big convergence clubs.I also estimated our country's provincial production function through the panel data approach.From the result I discovered that,in regional economy growth,there are factors cannot directly observed,but influences inputs.The estimator very is eminent. Beijing,Shanghai east and so on city local effect mostly for just when,but the western areas are mostly negative.The fixed period effect grows along with the time,this indicated the provinces have the technology advancement after the reform and open policy.The sum of capital elasticity and the labor elasticity is nearly one.It explained various local total quantity production functions are constant returns to scale.