Research On Shanghai Metropolitan Area's Internal Economic Disparities And Convergence Path

Regional economic disparities widened currently and it becomes an important economic issue which can have a great impact on economic development and social stability. Shanghai Metropolitan area is China's most competitive area with the fastest and dynamic economic development but it also suffers the internal regional economic disparities. The study on economic disparities and its cause and trend between regional cities will have a positive impact on shanghai metropolitan area's sustainable and sound development.This thesis contains seven parts. The first part is the introduction which illustrates the meaning, methodology and road-map of research. The second part is the overview of regional economic disparities, including the definition, cause and measure means. And the third part is the theory review and others'search summary.The forth part analyzes the current situation of the economic disparities within shanghai metropolitan area. We use Williamson coefficient to calculate the scale of difference and its changing trend from 1990 to 2005 and then we compare them with Guangzhou and Beijing-Tianjin metropolitan areas and other parts of China. We also use Tier coefficient breakdown to find the impact of inner-city difference and inter-city difference respectively.The fifth part analyzes the relationship between economic difference and industrial structure. We hypothesize and testify their relations and we find that the second industry has the biggest contribution to the economic difference.The sixth part uses co-integration and granger casualty tools to analyze the cause and effect relations between indicators which have influences on economic growth and try to find out the convergence path of shanghai metropolitan economic disparities.After the researches above on shanghai metropolitan area economic disparities we put forward some relevant measures and advice to address the issue.