An Analysis On The Spatial Pattern Of Economic Growth In Yangtze River Delta

It was in 1997 that Yangtze River Delta was first put forward in due form definitely. It is one of the first experimental units of regional programming, and it is now called the strongest economic region in integration aspect in China.The regional economic growth has always been the central part in the studies of the economist and economic geographer. The new classical economic growth theory, the new economic growth theory and the spatial economics theory have been formed after the long phase research. Unlike the first two theories, the assumption condition of spatial economics are increasing returns and monopolistic competition. This dissertation is based on these three theories, made use of the sample of 59 county regions and 16 city regions in Yangtze River Delta, depending on recently developed methods of spatial econometric techniques, particularly explains and researches the spatial pattern, spatial spillover and spatial heterogeneity of the regional economic growth in Yangtze River Delta.Based on the exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), in the country regions, the evolution of Moran, I statistic of log per capita GDP over the 1994-2005 period suggests that per capita regional GDPs are positively spatially autocorrelated; combining the information in a Moran scatterplot and the significance of LISA, it indicates the presence of spatial heterogeneity in the form of the Core-Periphery model, Particularly, Suzhou regions and the north of Jiaxing regions are the rich clusters, the south regions of Zhejiang province and the north regions of Jiangsu province constitute the poor regions; looking more closely at the inverse relationship between log per capita GDP in 1994 and average growth rates, we can see that, compared to that before the year 1997, the economic growth disparities among the core area and the neighbors have been decreased, so have the inside regions of the Zhejiang province, but the situation in inside regions of the Jiangsu province is quite different. But in the city regions, both the Moran, I statistic of log per capita GDP and the average growth rates do not suggest any significant autocorrelated phenomenon about per capita regional GDPs.On one hand, depending on the spatial autocorrelated models, generally the new economic growth theory and the spatial economics theory can partly explain the difference, convergency and reasons of the economic growth in Yangtze River Delta regions; the high significant estimate value of the autocorreative parameter can show that an average increase of 0.197 percent in a regional production caused by one percent increase in neighboring regional economic production, moreover, the confine of the spillover are four units in county regions, but the effect of economic spillover is not significant among the city regions. On another hand, based on the estimation, analysis and test of the geographically weighted regression model (GWR), it suggests that, GWR model is clearly better than the OLS model (ordinarily least square), either the county regions or the city regions have the presence of spatial heterogeneity, and the foundation, location, circumstance, policy and the spillover are mostly the important factors why regions have different economic growth levels.Therefore, for the sake of accelerating the economic growth and development of the Yangtze River Delta, much work should be done in time. First of all, in the county regions, because the factors like human capital, traffic, information communication and so on have significant positive effect on the economic growth, we should continue bringing up more talented students and skilled workers, improving the foundation condition, but the innovation is a weakness point, the government will attach much importance to the R&D, moreover, the urbanization level lags behind the economic growth level seriously, related department need to reform the urbanization system and repeal policy obstacle; in the city regions, the patent and FDI variable promote the economic growth greatly, so encouraging technology innovation is available and is a long goal, however, as the foundation condition is concerned, it does not match with the economic growth level, so it is important to accelerate the traffic development, expand the information space and enhance the intercommunication progress. Secondly, the significant effect of spillover between the county regions highlights the importance of spatial interactions and geographical location in regional growth, but city regions should strengthen the economic cooperation, the riches should help the neighbor poors, the poors must help each other, on the other hand, the cooperation between the county and city should also be reinforced. Thirdly, because of the presence of spatial heterogeneity, different regions have its own characteristic, such as resource, location, industry et al, therefore, each region need to develop its own advantage, and three industry zones are proposed to be built, they are new high technology industry zone in Shanghai, industry zone around Hangzhou gulf and foundation industry zone along the Yangtze Rive.