The Study On The Impact Of The Western Development Policy On Convergence Of Regional Economic Growth

The regional economic gap is widening in recent years in China. Meanwhile, what has become the important focus of China’s government economy work, is controlling and narrowing the regional economic gap, realizing the coordinated development of regional economy. To control and narrow the regional economic gap, China’s government have developed many policies, one of what is western development.Western Development started in 2000,what has been 10 years. In 10 years, the western development policy has made important contributions to the development of the western region, but whether the policy alleviates the economic development gap within the nations and the western region, if the policy ease of regional economic development gap, what factor it is through playing a role, and what differences are these factors for the country and western regions; if the gap between regional economic development is not alleviated, or reduced, then what measures should be taken to achieve the desired effect. To answer these questions, it is necessary to study the convergence of regional economic growth.The issue of economic growth convergence has resulted lots of controversy in theoretical and academic circles.Neo-classical growth theory figured out that, as the marginal benefit of capital reduced in production, with the inter-regional free movement of factors, less backward areas with less capital stock per capita would due to higher faster capital gains and growth rate than the more developed regions with more capital stock per capita, thereby catching up with the economically developed areas,inter-regional output per capita will tend to balance out and the regional economic growth convergence. Against neo-classical growth theory’s defects of treating technical advancement as exogenous, new theory of economic growth treats the technical advancement as endogenous, questioned the theory of convergence. Meanwhile, some factors can be found for the low-income countries or regions to speed up economic growth and narrow the gap between the regional economic factors in new theory of economic growth.Based on the above two kinds of economic theory, the western development policy results from the perspective of regional economic convergence to examine, therefore, issues to be discussed in this paper will become:whether the western development policy is to promote the economic growth convergence within the country and western region or not, it is by which to promote such convergence. For these two questions, the paper based on the neoclassical growth theory and new economic growth theory, according to a more clear and logical thinking framework and a more standardized quantitative analysis of economic and statistical paradigm, the combination of theoretical and empirical, quantitative and qualitative analysis, studies these two issues in-depth and discover important consults.In this paper, in accordance with the above thought, we firstly studied literatures related to regional economic growth convergence. Then together with the purpose of this research, we discussed and presented our research methods, econometric model and measurement indicators to be used in our research. And from the empirical point of view, on the western development policy for the western region of China and the impact of the economic convergence of quantitative measurement and qualitative analysis to study the inter-regional economic growth caused by various factors affecting the differences, and further explore the mechanism of these factors. Conclusion is drawn:Firstly, from the countryside point of view, before 2000, there is no a convergence andβabsolute convergence, butβconditional convergence characteristic has been shown, however the convergence rate is very small; in 2000, each of the provinces show significantlyσconvergence andβconvergence, and convergence rate significantly increases, indicating that the western development policy by changing the impact of regional economic convergence of several factors including the level of human capital, permanent asset investment, the process of industrialization and foreign trade level of effective promotion of the national inter-regional Economic convergence, thus narrowing the gap between east and west, reaching the expected results; Secondly, within the western region for the year 2000 a certain period of time, the western region showsσconvergence, but also in the entire time period shows theβconvergence, but after implementing the western development policy, this convergence has disappeared, and instead shows the trend of the starting powder, indicating that the western development policy in promoting economic convergence within the western region achieved an limited effect; thirdly, the western development policy promotes the country as well as across regions within the western region’s economic growth mainly through human capital, fixed assets investment and industrialization of the three factors.This article is divided into five chapters, the main contents are as follows:The first chapter is an introduction. After briefly introduces the research background, this study proposes the purpose and significance of research ideas and language of the structure, and describes some of the features of this article.The second chapter is a regional economic growth convergence literature review related research. Theoretical basis research is of first, and the new classical economic growth theory and new economic growth theory in relation to the issue of regional economic growth in the basic theory of convergence, for a more systematic organization, summed up the debate between them and the place of this paper. Research again is the introduction of regional economic growth convergence around this topic, a number of representative view of existing research methods and comb, and were summarized and concluded. Finally, this paper pointed out the methods to be used.The third chapter is the study of methods and models. Around this part of the purpose of this study, in based on the results of previous studies, the paper formed the methods and models, and shows more systematic introduction and demonstration. On research methods, the paper mainly use of theσindex test method and the panel data model. On model configurations, based on neoclassical growth theory and new economic growth theory, the formation of the paper examines the convergence of regional economic growth, and derive related models-theβabsolute convergence model and theβconditional convergence model, so empirical research has been laid a solid theoretical basis.The fourth chapter is the empirical analysis. This article first introduces a source of research data and preliminary processes. In order to eliminate the influence of price changes, the article calculates the 1990-2009 years, per capita GDP deflator of the provinces and explains the principles of index selection and calculation process. Then, using descriptive statistics, a index analysis and convergence analysis of the western development policy for the western area of the country and the impact of convergence of a quantitative measure, respectively, and qualitative analysis of the resulting national and economic growth within the western region the difference various factors, and further explore the influence of these factors the underlying mechanisms, and compared the various factors for the country and western regions of the different roles of growth in the economy, which is aimed at reducing regional development disparities, and promote coordinated regional economic.The fifth chapter is the basic conclusions and policy implications. This chapter gives a brief summary of research findings obtained by empirical analysis, combined with the related study found that proposed to control and reduce regional economic disparities and needs some inspiration for further study.Characteristics of this study mainly reflected in research content and research methods.Research content, based on neoclassical growth theory and new economic growth theory, the two time periods of 1991-1999 and 2000-2009 of comparative analysis of the western development policy within the western region for the national and the impact of the economic convergence of the empirical research. As the western development policy before the study was to assess the effect of the western development policy to promote national economic growth, there is no the western development policy on economic growth within the western region of convergence.This paper would like to make up the inadequacies of previous studies. The paper not only analyzes the western development policy on the national economic growth of the impact of convergence, but also of the western development policy within the western region of convergence of economic growth. It can be said more comprehensive by the research.Research methods and models:(1) Theβconvergence analysis bases on panel data model research. Most previous studies use a cross-sectional data regression model, using panel data models is less. Because panel data not only reflect the data in a given period the law of each individual, but also describe changes over time for each individual rule, a collection of time series data and the common benefits of cross-sectional data, allowing the researchers to control the behavior of the individual differences in terms of access to the greater flexibility, and give researchers a large number of data samples, which also increase the degree of freedom and reduce collinearity among the explanatory variables, thereby improving the effectiveness of econometric models, this paper based on the convergence analysis of panel data models. (2) The combination of various research methods, three-dimensional multi-level research. Combed through the relevant literature, we found that previous studies about different methods can be divided into three categories:describing statistical analysis; evaluation method; measurement analysis. Most of the studies use one or two research methods, so the conclusion may not be convincing enough. This paper makes combination of these three methods, by comparing depth of the western development policy on the western region and the country of the impact of internal economic convergence, expected to be more credible conclusions.