A Positive Research On The Convergence Of Metropolitan Regions In China

According to neo-classical growth theory, the growth of per capital income in poor areas is faster than in rich areas, that means the gap between poor areas and rich areas will be lower or eliminated. But new growth theory considered that the rich areas will be richer and poor areas will be poorer, because of the human capital accumulation. Based on this, researchers in China conduct a lot of empirical tests on that whether there exists economic growth convergence in Chinese regional economic. But main research objects of these studies is all of China, east of China, west of China or central China, and most of these studies use provincial economic date. These studies have great significant for the regional economy development of China, but can't provide theoretical basis for the development of metropolitan region. In addition, these studies ignore the difference of growth path between city and province. Therefore, this paper choose four metropolitan regions that represent Chinese economy as research objects, and test the convergence of these metropolitan regions. By Barro and Sala-I-Martin model, we can find that there is convergence in these metropolitan regions, and between them. This conclusion make up for the deficiency of this research field, and provides reference for government to make developing strategy of regional economic integration.