Soft Input And Quality Of Economic Growth

During the 200 years history of Development of economic growth theory, the quantity of economic growth and factor inputs have been regarded as the main contents of economic growth. Most of the theories of economic growth are focus on the issue how to achieve the expansion of the economic number, but very few related to the Quality of economic growth. And Literatures on how factor inputs effct the level of national income or per capita income level of a period time is also mainly considerate hard-input such as labor and capital, while the role of technology, institutions, and the enthusiasm of workers and other soft-inputs on economic growth are of less attention. However, since the reform and opening up, China has achieved remarkable achievements in the quality of economic growth, but proplems of the Quality of economic growth has become increasingly prominent, such as:structural imbalance, uneven distribution, a widening wealth gap, resource shortages and environmental pollution, and so on. Therefore.based on the well-defined and accurate measure of the soft-inputs, this article trying to use Provinces'2000-2009 panel data to study soft-inputs'(mainly institutional, technological) impact on quality of economic growth,and from soft-inputs perspective to provide an explanation for the regional differences economic growth.This paper mainly study the impact of the soft-input of institutional factors and technology factors on the four dimension of quality of economic growth, they are structure of economic growth, stability of economic growth, welfare changes and the distribution of the fruits of economic growth, resource use and ecological cost of economic growth.specific conclusions are as follows:Firstly, in the soft-inputs. Compared the soft-inputs of various provinces and municipalities from years 2000 to 2009, mainly from prospective of government intervention, level of openness, financial sector development, property rights system, government" investment in education, research and environmental.we found:(1) Diffrences of the degree of Government intervention among different provincial and municipal are larger, the level of government spending are relatively high in autonomous regions and more Minority ethnic identitv regions, eastern region are relatively low; (2) From view of the opening level. Beijing, Guangdong and Shanghai are the highest level of openness, total import and export to GDP is more than 100%:from view of the system of property rights. The proportion of non-state economy is higher in eastern provinces which are of the relative high of the total economy, while the and non-state economic activity in western provinces are far below the east:(3) From view of the level of financial development, indicator reflecting the level of development of financial sector which measure as financial institutions deposits to GDP show that. Beijing, Shanghai and Shanxi are of the leading level. Unlike other indicators, there are no significantly difference among the eastern provinces and the central and western provinces;(4) From the view of the science and education inputs, investments for education, research and environmental protection are increasing year by year in the most of the provinces.Secondly, we make comparative analysis of the Quality of economic growth of various provinces and municipalities from years 2000 to 2009 from respects of economic structure, economic stability, economic welfare and resource allocation to environmental costs. Data results show that:(1) level of industrialization rate which reflects the economic structure show that the rate of the industrialization in central and western provinces are rising, keeping steadly in the eastern and northeastern provinces, as from the proportion of the three industries output value, there are litter difference, proportion of primary industry are hiher in central provinces, while other regions the proportion of primary industry are low;(2) From the view of economic stability, the central and western provinces have relatively large fluctuations in the CPI, the GDP of the eastern provinces are of relatively large fluctuations, western provinces have relatively large fluctuations in the urban unemployment rate;(3) urban-rural income gap index which reflects the equilibrium level of welfare distribution show that urban-rural income gap in the central and western provinces is much higher than that in eastern and northeastern provinces, the urban residents'income level is more than three times to that of rural residents in central and western province in addition to Hubei and Jiangxi province, in the eastern provinces, Guangdong and Fujian urban-rural income gap is relatively large;(4) unit GDP energy consumption indicators reflect the resources and environmental costs of economic growth show that energy consumption per unit of GDP in the eastern provinces is much lower than that in the central and western provinces, per unit GDP energy consumption in Shanxi, Qinghai, Inner Mongolia and Guizhou's is very high, unit industrial GDP and electricity consumption per unit GDP have similar geographical characteristics.Finally, this paper makes empirical tests for the relationship between soft investment and the quality of economic growth, mainly analysis the effect of various soft-inputs to the four dimensions of quality of economic growth, empirical results show that:(1) effect of soft-inputs to the economic structure, as the hard-inputs of capital investment is still play their role. level of government intervention in the market, the level of openness, investment in education and scientific research has a significant promoting role in the industrial rate and the development of third industry and non-farm industry and non-farm employment;(2) effect of soft-inputs to the economy stability, government intervention in the market has a significant role to reduce the volatility of GDP and the urban unemployment rate, the volatility of GDP will increase as the level of the openness increase, raising the level of financial development can reduce CPI fluctuations, the per capita capital increase has a significant positive effect to reduce the volatility of GDP;(3) Effect of soft-inputs to people's welfare, government spending on education has a significant promoting role in removing literacy, the improvement of the per capita share can also reduce the proportion of illiteracy and increase the proposion of high school population to the total population. Government education and research spending and non-state economic development can significantly reduce the urban-rural income gap; as the capital hard-inputs continue to play their role, level of openness, investment in education and scientific research and other soft inputs have a significant promoting role to the per capita GDP.(4) Effect of soft-inputs to resourses and environment costs, government spending on scientific research and environmental protection can significantly decrease energy consumption and reduce waste water discharge, but soft investments have the relatively limited impact in reducing emissions and solid waste emissions; at the same time, financial development have some positive role to reduce energy consumption.Therefore, a longer period of time in the future, the soft-inputs are significance to the intensive use of resources, improving ecological environment, maintaining steadily and rapidly economic growth. Government has a great future in increasing the Quantity of soft-inputs and improving the Quality of economic growth to promote regional economic growth. Specifically from the following aspects to consider:adjust and optimize industrial structure in order to Coordination the structure of economic growth; use relevant macroeconomic policies (fiscal, monetary and investment policies) to adjust aggregate demand to ensure the stability of economic growth; by effectively protect the basic livelihood of low-income groups, steadily raise the proportion of middle-income, establish and improve the public finance system, achieve public services of education and health care equalization, implementate industry nurturing agriculture and cities support rural policy and strengthening tax adjustment efforts and other measures to reduce wealth gap,and increase people's welfare; promote the price system reform of resources and elements and vigorously develop the circular economy to achieve the sustainability of economic growth. At the same time, continue to implement Property rights system reform that Ownership reform as the main part, deepening the financial system reform to improve the efficiency of capital allocation, increase policy support for the central and western regions. And draft different R & D investment strategy according to the region's economic development level and industrial structure and take positive measures to promote regional human capital levels.