Empirical Research On Interrelationship Between High-tech Industry And Economic Growth: 1995-2004

During recent years, high-tech industry developed at high speed. However, the problem of industry structure still distinct. Accelerating high-tech industry development is important to solve such structure problem, through transforming economic growth style, improving resource using efficiency, and increasing the capability of sustainable development. As to a nation, high-tech industry has an indispensable strategic status. Therefore, many researchers study deeply high-tech industry, from deferent views, using deferent methods, and on deferent nations or regions. The theoretical values of these researches lie in that they make us understand deeply high-tech industry itself and the relationships between high-tech industry and others, further, on practically, give us the advices and ideas to develop high-tech industry more efficiently.Based on such era background, theoretical background, and practical background, this paper examines the inter-relationships between high-tech industry development and economic growth, empirically. The process of empirical analysis is constructing model, investigating data, data processing, recognizing model, and estimating model, and results analysis. Constructing model bases on the multiply equations model on panel data. The time dimension of panel data is from 1995 to 2004. And the region dimension of panel data is whole nation, east part, middle part, west part, Yangtze River Delta, eight provinces (or cities) with the highest value-added of high-tech industry.However, the aim of this paper is not only at finding the inter-relationships, but also at developing high-tech industry more efficiently. Therefore, after researching the inter-relationships between high-tech industry development and economic growth, this paper compared and analyzed among nations and among provinces on the following items, including manufacturing, high-tech industry, and each sub-industry in high-tech industry, emphasizing on R&D density. Via model analysis, this paper studies the influence of R&D density on the rate of value-added of high-tech industry. Such result can tell us how to improve the efficiency of high-tech industry, because higher rate of value-added means higher product efficiency.The results are as follows. From the result about the inter-relationships between high-tech industry development and economic growth, high-tech industry plays little role on economic growth, however, economic growth plays a great role on the high-tech industry, including the value-added and the number of applying patents. That is to say, economic growth depend on not technology but the accumulation of invest, and the power impelling high-tech industry is not from innovation but from economic growth.From the analysis on international compare, the rate of value-added in high-tech industry depends mainly on the manufacturing R&D density, and on the following three sub-industries, such as medical manufacturing, electronic & communicating equipment manufacturing, and medical instrument & apparatus manufacturing.Based on the results from empirical analysis and comparing analysis, this paper gives the following advices.Firstly, it is necessary to accelerate development of high-tech industry, increasing its proportion in whole economy, which will improve its role on economic growth.Secondly, sustaining the high speed of economic growth is a crucial factor in developing high-tech industry.Thirdly, it is useful to adjust the structures of high-industry, such as possession-ship, scale, sub-industry, and region. Fourthly, Middle and West Parts should pay much attention on the efficiency of technology invest, meanwhile, East part should increase R&D input, improve the R&D density of manufacturing and high-tech industry, strength the power of technology and international competition.Lastly, improving R&D density of the following three sub-industries in high-tech industry, medical manufacturing, electronic & communicating equipment manufacturing, and medical instrument & apparatus manufacturing, can efficiently increase the rate of value-added, improve the technology content in products, and diminish the gap to developed nations.