The Measurement Of Chinese Cities' Technical Efficiency And Research On Its Influencing Factors

As the refinement of the method of technical efficiency and the maturity of Chinese city data, it is possible to study the Chinese urban and test urban theory from the perspective of efficiency. In this paper, we estimate the level of Chinese cities'technical efficiency and its influencing factors by using stochastic frontier production function based on the panel data of 231 cities in 2001-2013. We find out that:(1) the levels of technical efficiency of Chinese cities are low and at inefficient state; (2) urban technical efficiency shows a "high east and low west" pattern; (3) the levels of industrialization and service industry have significant positive effects on China's urban efficiency, and overall China's cities are driven by industrialization; (4) the size of government has significant negative effects on urban efficiency, and the level of foreign direct investment has positive effects on western region but negative effects on eastern region; (5) affected by the structure of industry, city technical efficiency shows an inverted U-shaped relationship with city size, and at the average level of industrial structure we estimate the optimal city size is 9.356 million. Our study shows that most China's cities are under-urbanized, which causes much loss of efficiency. We think as the urbanization in China has proceeded to a new stage, we should focus more on the quality and efficiency of city development. Market-oriented policy benefits city most. City policy should be accordant with the characteristic and development state of regional cities. Speed up the transfer of rural people to the medium size city with population between 0.5-1.0 million and to the large size city with population between 1.0-3.0 million.