An Empirical Study On The Construction Of Jinan Regional Financial Center

Finance is the main part of modern market economy. Many researchers found that there is a reciprocal causality relationship between financial development and economic growth. Rapid economic growth of one area will cause the need of more financial service and promote the development in finance sector. And in the meanwhile, financial development can also react on economic growth which is because huge capital brought by financial development can be used to stimulate the economy. Financial center, which is the main carrier of finance, is able to increase the concentration and diffusion abilities of the area. These abilities can help upgrade the mode of economic development and adjust industrial structure.With the rapid development of domestic finance industry, most major provinces and cities in China have put forward the strategy of building regional financial centers including Jinan in recent years. These strategies raised higher requirements for the theories and applications of regional financial centers. Based on this background, this paper will conduct empirical research and propose suggestions for the construction of Jinan regional financial center.After reviewing literature, we can find most literature emphasize more on theoretical analysis than empirical analysis. Regarding to empirical research on Jinan, most papers only analyzed Jinan itself or compared Jinan to cities within Shandong province. Thus, this paper decides to research the construction of Jinan regional financial center comparing to provincial capitals which financial and economic competitiveness are close to Jinan.First of all, this paper constructed a competitiveness evaluation index system of regional financial center. This index system contains 3 first-level indices,15 second-level indices and 34 third-level indices. And the first-level indices are respectively finance competitiveness, economy competitiveness and external environment competitiveness.Then, based on the data of Jinan ranging from 2006 to 2015, this paper analyzed all three competitiveness of Jinan and found that finance competitiveness of Jinan is stronger than economy and external environment competitiveness.After that, based on the data of 17 cities of Shandong province and 6 provincial capitals including Jinan ranging from 2006 to 2014, this paper conducted factor analysis respectively for finance, economy, external environment and overall competitiveness. By doing factor analysis, we can get factor scores and sort cities by these scores. By horizontal comparative analysis, we can find that no matter Jinan is compared to cities within Shandong province or to the other 5 provincial capitals with similar competitiveness (Xi’an, Zhengzhou, Hefei, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan), its economy competitiveness is weakest, its external competitiveness is a little better and its finance competitiveness is strongest. However, the growing speed of finance competitiveness is not very fast which are the same as the conclusions we got from vertical comparative analysis.In the end, based on the conclusions from the above empirical analysis, mix development mode was chosen for the construction of Jinan regional financial center. Besides, this paper has also put forward some suggestions for the construction of Jinan regional financial center. For the promotion of finance competitiveness, Jinan should relocate its target, make sure it can accomplish the target by deadline, form a multi financial institutions system and encourage financial innovation. For the promotion of economy competitiveness, Jinan should accelerate the development of real economy, upgrade the industrial structure, enlarge opening strategy and actively implement international cooperation. For the promotion of external environment competitiveness, Jinan should enhance infrastructure constructions like telecommunication and traffic, reinforce cultivation and introduction of talents.