Regional Economic Growth In Productivity And Industrial Structure

The connotation of productivity is a representative of the effect on output of the factors such as technological progress, management level, personnel qualities and scale economy, etc. Productivity in essence is an efficient use of resources, and it is significant to research it when there is a growing lack of per capita share of natural resources. The foundation of modern economic growth theory is technological progress, with a characteristic of improving productivity continuously. Productivity improvement is extremely important for a country's economic growth. There are two ways to achieve output growth. One is increasing the volume of factors of production; the other is improving the productivity. Since the resources are scarce, there must be limitation of the increase in investment; in this case, a sustainable growth can only be achieved by improving productivity, which is an issue we are all concerned about.The industrial structure also has an impact on economic growth. As American economist Stigliz pointed out that there are four reasons of growth: capital, labor, technology and industry structure. Production structure is a combination of factors of production, and among which the industrial structure is an important one. Capital, labor and technology function in production when joint together in the industrial structure. A variety of industrial structure will lead to different modes of production and output results under given capital, labor and technology. The economic growth is not only a process of productivity growth, but also an adjustment of economic structure.There are two points of view about reasons of the change in the industrial structure. From the perspective of needs, the study is mainly on the increase of revenue and diversification of the demands, which is based on Engle's Law; from the view of supply, the change is due to the increase in productivity and the progress of technology. When considering the dynamic industrial structure, a combination of these two views is needed in study.The change of total factors of productivity may have a positive of negative influence on the employment share between the industries. When other conditions remain unchanged, an industrial total factor productivity growth was higher than the weighted average of the economic level, the employment share of this industry depends on the changes in the size of price elasticity. Ifβis less than negative 1 (which means greater price elasticity), then the growth of the relative total factor productivity would increase the share of employment; ifβis greater than negative 1, then the growth of the relative total factor productivity would reduce the share of employment. When the income elasticity of a particular industry is above the average level, the increase in revenue will increase its share of employment; if the income elasticity is below the average level, the increase in income will reduce the share of employment.Since its reform, the regional differences have become one of the important issues for China's economic growth. Most of the major theoretical and empirical research focus on the region's economic convergence of revenue, and the analysis of the productivity is limited to its growth rate, as well as its contribution to the growth of the economy on the measure.The gap of different regions can not only be explained by factor input, but the productivity gap can not be ignored. Increase in productivity lies in the changes in the industrial structure, scientific and technological progress and endogenous economic growth.The Changes in the industrial structure will have an influence on the productivity, which is achieved through the production factors shifting from low-productivity to high-productivity industry, and through the industry shifting from low to high-growth productivity. In order to narrow the gap between regions and its productivity, the phenomenon of dividends should not be ignored. But empirical researches seem to indicate that many of dividends do not exist, and the reasons behind this phenomenon need a further discussion. Are there any areas of convergence in productivity? Furthermore, the causes of the convergence, and the causes of different stages of convergence need to be tested.