The Social Capital And Regional Economic Growth Difference Study

Unbalanced regional economic development is a very prominent problem whether form the worldwide orfrom many countries internal regional economic development present situation. Such as the northern andsouthern region of the world, southern and northern Italy, China’s eastern, central and western regions.After the reform and opening, especially since the1990s, with the high-speed development of our country’seconomy, it brings a lot of problems at the same time, for example, the polarization between the rich andthe poor and unbalanced regional economic development. China’s regional economic developmentgradually expanded the gap, arousing the concern of the government and all sectors of the community. Howto achieve a coordinated regional economic development is one of the goals of China’s current economicdevelopment.Explore the root causes of the differences of regional economic growth has always been the subject thatthe world economists are keen. The traditional classical economics think that the capital and labor is thesource of the regional economic growth, then economists discovered that technological innovation is alsovery important to regional economic growth, regional technology innovation level difference is animportant reason that lead to different regional economic development. With a detailed study, the newsystem economists think system is the deciding factors of the regional economic growth difference. Whileas the representative of economists, Schultz thinks that human capital is an important variable of economicgrowth,“Economic development depends largely on the quality of the people, not a natural resourceabundance barren and capital stock amount”. After economists constant hard work and exploration,although more and more profound and comprehensive understanding about the reason of unbalancedregional economic development, still not fully explain the difference of regional economic growth.In the1970s, the term “social capital” first proposed by sociologists, its explanatory power is concernedby each subject experts and scholars. Economists have also set their sights on social capital, they use thesocial capital theory to study the macro and micro economic issues in the economic and social actively. Inthis paper, on the basis of previous research, the definition of social capital, characteristics and measuringmethods are discussed, it mainly use Putnam’s definition and summarizes the main features of social capital,that is cumulative, public and not controllable. Secondly, review the papers about the regionaleconomic growth, including the current situation of the regional economy, the regional economic growththeory and factors. This paper is focused on the mechanism analysis from the following five aspects ofsocial capital in detail: First, social capital influence the material capital flow direction, has the functions ofthe resources disposition; Second, the social capital has an effect on the accumulation and flow of humancapital, which promote the regional economic growth indirectly; Third, the social capital benefits theenterprise’s technology innovation capability; Fourth, social capital promote the formation anddevelopment of industrial clusters; Fifth, the informal system of social capital is very important to theregional economic growth. The fourth part of the paper is the empirical research, it proves that socialcapital contributes the regional economic growth by using the eastern、central and western regions’ paneldata of from1991-2008.Through the theoretical and empirical analysis, the paper come to the conclusion:the social capital and the regional economic growth are concerned, and it is a very important reason forunbalanced regional economic development. The social capital affects the regional economic developmentindirectly by the physical capital, human capital, regional technology innovation, regional industry clusterand system. If we want to narrow the gap between the area, we can’t just give capital, policy and taxpriority, other means must be taken, such as the investment on social capital, culture and education. Theconstruction and accumulation of social capital can’t be done overnight, it needs the government, theenterprise and individual work together. In the construction and accumulation of social capital the role ofthe government is particularly important, it plays a leading role, so the government must realize theimportance of social capital, pay high attention to it, it must construct and build the social capital in order toimprove the regional economic growth balanced.