Spatial Agglomeration Of High-tech Enterprises And Regional Economic Growth

Spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises is enforced by market size effects of regional economic growth, and affects regional economic growth through technical knowledge spillover effect and linkage effect, it is somewhat endogenous between the two variables. On the basis of combing relevant literature of agglomeration and economic growth, we firstly give a brief analysis of the status and dynamic change of spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises in our country, then we analyze the impact mechanism, lastly, we test the relationship between spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises and regional economic growth empirically using data from China’s major cities. The paper considers the endogenous problem of agglomeration variable, we estimate the models with System GMM method and test the robustness of the empirical results using three stage least squares (3SLS) to estimate simultaneous equations. Through theoretical analysis and empirical analysis, we have some conclusions as follows.Firstly, through the dynamic changes of spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises from1997～2011, we find the spatial agglomeration indies of cities which are higher show a slow downward trend, and inversely, the spatial agglomeration indies of cities which are lower show a slow rising trend after2006. Secondly, the spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises plays a significant positive role in promoting regional economic growth, when the degree of spatial agglomeration is in a low level, technical knowledge spillover effect and linkage effect arising from spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises can contribute to regional economic growth. Thirdly, the relationship between spatial agglomeration and regional economic growth is not a simple linear relationship, in fact, an’inverted U’non-linear relationship alternatively, that is,’Williamson Hypothesis’exists.Overall, the spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises is conductive to regional economic growth but there exists a ’threshold’, when the agglomeration level is too high, it will result in’crowding effect’ caused by imbalance in the allocation of production factors, which will have a negative impact on the regional economic growth. Nowadays the central government accelerates the process of urbanization and proposed the concept of’urban clusters’, and the development of high-tech industry will become the central issue and important planning. The paper provides some reference for the relationship between the spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises and regional economic growth based on the data from China’s major cities, and it has some practical significance. At present our country is in the key period of urbanization construction, the development of high-tech industries is an important measure to promote industrial upgrading and assure the quality of regional economic growth. The paper provides some references for the government through exploring the relationship between spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprises and regional economic growth. For the areas where the degree of spatial agglomeration is in a low level, they should take measures to promote the level of spatial agglomeration of high-tech enterprise, and for the areas where the degree of spatial agglomeration is in a high level, they should pay attention to alleviate the excessive agglomeration which will result in’crowding effect’ in order to keep coordinated regional economic growth.