| Today,China is in the process of all-round urbanization with high-speed infrastructure developing.Informatization plays key role in this process.Smart city is an advanced form of an information-enabled urban.It is not only an innovative concept of construction but a new pattern for urban development.Infrastructure is the prerequisite of building smart cites and a key factor of driving economic growth.Infrastructure of smart cities can trigger economic growth in multiple ways.It not only conducive to reduces social operation cost directly,enhances the efficiency of the socio-economic operation in China's cities,but provides solutions for such long-terms problems like improving urban eco-systems,traffic congestion,zipper roads,etc.At present,smart city development in China is still at a preliminary stage.Providing measurement and assessment of smart cities,particularly the efficiency of infrastructure construction,shall facilitate the government to allocate relevant resources optimally and accelerate the process of smart city development in China.Currently,the methodology of assessing for smart cities are generally on information system,and most focus on performance reviews for specific regions,industrial sectors and project.There are less studying in researching and assessment on the input and output of infrastructures in smart cities.Author of this paper starts with reviewing literature in relation to smart cites in the realm of economics,refers tons of works on information system evaluation and derives a research method from traditional economics theory.Then,the author analyzes impacts on smart cities from interactions between urbanization and informatization to initiate the concept of smart city.The author looks at connotation of it and defines the cope of urban infrastructure,does research on smart cities' framework from informatization and urbanization perspectives.After that,a case study and analysis of global pilots of smart city is conducted.The author also examines the mechanism of how smart city infrastructures driving economic growth,sets up sequential order of infrastructures and non-infrastructures investment.Then efforts are made to examine the driving and industrial clustering effects of smart city infrastructures,which sheds light on the mechanism behind economic output impacts from ramped-up infrastructure development.Next,Leontief's input-output method is implemented to assess the driving effect of investment made by smart-city-related industries,considering direct driving effect on economy,cross-sector value added and job creation,followed by inspirations drawn for smart city analysis.Last,economic efficiency of 70 smart city pilots in China has been evaluated by data envelopment analysis and stochastic frontier analysis.When analyzing the stimulating effects of infrastructure construction on the economy,current methods are limited focusing on the driving effects on total output.And the evaluation that includes value-added and job creation is considered relatively innovative.This paper is based on the input-output chart of WIOD and uses Leontief's input-output model to conduct a empirical calculation of the driving effects on economic growth from total output,added output and job creation.It has been three years since the smart city pilot program was announced and commenced.However,the analyses from the perspective of input and output on selected cities are still at early stage.This paper employs a combination of 3 phase data envelopment model and stochastic frontier model,to carry out static and dynamic analysis of construction efficiency of smart city infrastructures.First,on the basis of data from 2014,assuming scaled returns are variable,a combination of data envelopment model and stochastic frontier model is relied upon to examine the economic efficiency of 70 cities of the pilot program,followed by a comparison between efficiency changes of cities before(2011)and after(2014)joining the pilot using Malmquist index method.In the end,stochastic frontier model is used to estimate the coefficient of urban infrastructure against output and to analyze the economic efficiency in different cities.Investment efficiency varies considerably in different regions in China.The threephase DEA discovers that the highest efficiency is found in Wuhan,and the results of nine cities,including Shijiazhuang,Taiyuan and Wuxi are attributed to constraints in terms of education and population.The Malmquist finds out that,between 2011 and2014,the geometric average of all selected cities are 1.021,which indicates improvement of overall production efficiency with a rate higher than the national average.This finding can be explained that this improvement in pilot cities are from the improvement of their overall efficiency,which can be ascribed to improved resource utilization efficiency.And the stochastic frontier model re-evaluates the infrastructure efficiency,which reveals that construction of municipal facilities,like pipelines,on the one hand,significantly boost output,on the other hand,impacts input and output efficiency via labor and capital investment.SFA analysis also shows that inefficiency,rather than uncontrollable factors,ambient noises for instance,is the main reason that output is lower than production frontiers,which further indicates that infrastructure development shall be prioritized in current smart city construction.Given the analysis in the paper,the following policy proposals can be made.At current stage,the construction of smart cities should consider from the angle of the status of each city.Individualized plans shall be made for different cites and carry forward with their smart transformation.Infrastructure investment should be taken as priority and the format can be flexible.When making urban plan,more consideration shall be given to industrial synergies and promoting a new smart city form that integrates industries and the city itself.Smart city will have all-round impacts on the life of urban residents,and its planning incorporates factors ranging from areas of politics,culture and economy.This paper focuses on analyzing the economic efficiency of urban infrastructure development,which is a key issue during the development of smart cities in China.Further studies can be extended to long-term economic impacts,up-level application system of smart city infrastructure development and even its impacts on politics and culture.Given sufficient data,more accurate measurements on smart city infrastructure development can be conducted in the future using methods based on text. |
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