An Empirical Study On The Changes Of Industrial Structure And Its Influence On Economic Growth Of The Yangtze River Economic Belt

After the financial crisis, the United States, Germany and other developed countries are advocating the return of industry to promote economic development, China has also released the manufacturing power strategy such as "Made in China 2025". With the Yangtze River Economic Belt rising to a national strategy, how to effectively exploit the Yangtze River, such a golden waterway, to promote the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure has become the focus of industrial structure policy of the provinces and cities along the Yangtze River.Through the literature review of domestic and foreign scholars on the industrial structure changes of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, combining with classical theories about the industrial structure changes and regional unbalanced growth, based on the mechanism analysis of the industrial structure changes to economic growth, this paper has formed the overall research ideas.Firstly, the paper proceeds through calculation on three common variables, namely,industry comparative advantage, regional specialization and industrial agglomeration,which are all typical characterizations of industrial structure, to a comprehensive analysis on the effects of industrial structure changes of the Yangtze River Economic Belt. Location quotient index measures the industry comparative advantage. The regional specialization index and the inter regional specialization index measure regional specialization, while the degree of industrial concentration and industrial relative concentration measure industrial agglomeration.Then, the paper evaluates the effects of industrial structure changes of the Yangtze River Economic Belt through three industrial structure indicators of industrial structure optimization and upgrading, rationalization, advancing and high efficiency. The rationalization index is the deformation of Theil index, and the advancing index is the ratio of the output value of the high-tech industry and the total industry, and the high efficiency index is the industrial enterprises' ratio of profits to cost.In the end, the paper constructs the first order differential panel generalized moment estimation model based on the relationship among rationalization, advancing and high efficiency index and economic growth rate. According to the results of model calculation,the corresponding policy recommendations are given. The main conclusions of this paper are:1. The level of industrial structure's regional specialization and high-efficiency of the Yangtze River Economic Belt continued to rise in 2011. But, when the economic growth rate began to decline after 2011, the level of regional specialization declined slightly, and the level of high-efficiency falls down dramatically.2. Local governments of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, through the introduction of high technology industry and local protectionism, promote industrial structure advancing rising until now, at the same time, the overall level of industrial agglomeration continues to decrease. Compared with other industries, the comparative advantage of technology intensive industries has the minimum change.3. The rationalization of the industrial structure has continuously improved. The impact of industrial restructuring of the provinces and cities intensified differentiation.Shanghai is the first one to step out of the financial crisis, the industrial structure is in a high level in the process of rationalization. By contrast, Yunnan, in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, is in a lower level of rationalization process.4. With different specific performance, the rationalization, advancing and high efficiency of industrial structure of the Yangtze River Economic Belt, all have influence in promoting economic growth. In the high rate of economic growth, the rationalization and advancing of industrial structure has inhibitory effect on economic growth. When the economic growth rate is low, both rationalization and advancing of industry promote economic growth, and the latter with more significant influence. When the economic growth rate is high, the high efficiency of industry industrial structure promotes economic growth. While the economic growth rate is low, the high efficiency of industry industrial structure restrain economic growth efficiency.