16 Cities Of The Yangtze River Delta Urban Agglomeration Of Economic Efficiency And Its Influencing Factors

As the growth pole of a country or a region, urban areas should always pursue economic efficiency. Urban efficiency will directly effect urban and regional development in a long run. Enhancing urban efficiency is a must way to attain urban and regional sustainable development.Yangtze River Delta, which is located at the junction of China's eastern coastal belt and the industry-intensive belt along Yangtze River, rank as the highest level of economic and social development and urbanization process. The sixteen cities including Shanghai, Nanjin, Suzhou, Wuxi, Changzhou, Zhengjiang, Yangzhou, Taizhou, Nantong, Hangzhou, Ninbo, Shaoxing, Huzhou and Zhoushan,Taizhou, build up one of China's three city groups, which is known as Yangtze River Delta city group. The sixteen cities are great support of the entire regional economic development.This paper is aiming at finding answers for three questions.1) What are the economic efficiency of the sixteen cities like? 2) What are the major factors of economic efficiency of the sixteen cities? 3) What strategic choices and dispositions should be made to improve urban economic efficiency under the regional perspective.The thesis is composed of seven chapters. Chapter One starts with an introduction of the background, purpose and innovation of the study. Chapter Two is a review on previous research thus provides the thesis with a theoretical and practical foundation. Chapter Three provides some research background about the sixteen cities. Chapter Four, Chapter Five and Chapter Six are core parts of the paper. Chapter Three evaluates economic efficiency of the sixteen cities using Malmquist Model of the Data Envelopment Analysis and. Chapter Four summarizes the evolution features. of urban economic efficiencies. Chapter Six analyzes factors that influence urban economic efficiency based on theoretical hypothesis using panel data model. As a result, human capital, urbanization, financial development, industry structure, and openness are six major factors of economic efficiency. In the end, Chapter Seven analyzes the disadvantages of those cities that restrict their economic efficiency improvement and further on investigates strategic solutions to enhancing urban economic efficiency and achieving sustainable development under regional perspective.