The Impact Of National High-Tech Zones On Regional Economic Growth

It has been 30 years since China's approval of the first National High-tech Zone in 1988,and the number of National High-tech Zone set up by far has already exceeded 100.Promoting economic development through the establishment of special economic zones such as the National High-tech Zone and the Free Trade Zone is an important development strategy of China.The National High-tech Zone can effectively gather a large number of talents,but whether it can promote the overall economic growth of the region and achieve the desired results remains to be verified.This paper first reviews the theory and research literature of national high-tech zones,regional economic growth and the relationship between them,and finds that there are few scholars to study the policy effects of national high-tech zones,or the empirical part is not perfect.Therefore,this paper starts from the perspective of policy evaluation of national high-tech zones,and studies the impact of the establishment of national hightech zones on economic growth in various regions.Secondly,this paper describes and analyzes the status quo of national high-tech zones and China's economic growth.As to the analysis above,this paper selects the panel data of 231 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016.The first step is to use the double difference method to test the relationship between national high-tech zones and China's economic growth,and analyze the effects on the establishment of the national high-tech zone to the economic growth of various regions in China.Then we use the double differential propensity score matching method(PSM-DID)to test it again,and compare the test results with the analysis results using the DID method alone.Secondly,we conducted a robust analysis of the above tests by using the dynamic effect analysis method and adding the rejected cities that were established in the National High-tech Zone before 2003.Finally,we joined some of the cities that were excluded,and divided 283 prefecture-level cities across the country into six levels according to uniform standards,and analyzed the differences in policy effects between different levels of cities to set up national high-tech zones.Through the above research,we have the following conclusions: First,the establishment of the National High-tech Zone has indeed increased the economic growth rate of each region.This result is also established when a series of control variables are added.Second,this result also passes the test using the PSM-DID method.The test results pass the balance hypothesis test,although the results obtained by using the double differential propensity score matching are significantly lower than those obtained by simply using the double difference method,but still significantly positive.That means that the single double difference method has an overestimation of the final result.Thirdly,the double difference method was again carried out in the case where we joined the area that was removed to avoid mismatches and established the National High-tech Zone before 2003.The experimental results are consistent with the preliminary test results,indicating that the problem of matching confusion does not have much influence on the results in this study.Besides,the dynamic effect analysis diagram is drawn to verify that the double difference method used in this paper conforms to the common trend hypothesis,and after the implementation of the policy,the rate of change in economic growth continued to be positive,once again indicating that the establishment of the National High-tech Zone has improved China's economic growth level.Fourthly,we tested the effect of the implementation of the national high-tech zone policies of different levels of cities.We obtained that the national high-tech zone policy effect has a law of diminishing marginal benefit,that is,it will be weaker with the improvement of the urban level,and this marginal benefit diminishing law is not obvious in the sixth-tier cities,it means that the policy implementation in the fifth-tier cities is the strongest.Based on the above conclusions,this paper combines the current situation of China's national high-tech zones and the status quo of regional economic development and the above-mentioned empirical research process,and puts forward the corresponding policy recommendations from the problems existing within the national high-tech zone,the future development of the national high-tech zone,and how to implement the national high-tech zone policies.