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Imbalance measurement of regional economic quality development: evidence from China

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Abstract

Imbalance of regional development trends is strongly correlated over time and across provinces, paralleled the growth of the economic quality and even influenced by exogenous variables. In this paper, a regional ‘two-way’ theory based on ‘input and output’ is proposed, reflecting the current state of economic quality development comprehensively. An ‘inverse absolute dispersion method’ came up with calculating the Quality of Economic Imbalance in Regional Development (QEIRD) after the measurement of economic quality is obtained by the total factor productivity (TFP). Moreover, the distribution of Chi-square is fitted to classify the grades of QEIRD, and the causes of QEIRD are analyzed via exogenous variables and regional decomposition under the panel data from China at the provincial level. The results indicate that the new method of measuring QEIRD based on TFP is scientific and reasonable in China at the country level. Secondly, the results obtained from the three regional decomposition ways are highly consistent, showing that the QEIRD from China has been diminishing, though not continuously and more so in some periods and regions, and being in a transition from stage three to stage two. Thirdly, the mainspring of total QEIRD is from the between-regions QEIRD; however, the rate of the within-region QEIRD is increasing cannot be neglected. In addition, exogenous variables have a crucial role in reducing QEIRD; it is a long-term and unremitting efforts to achieve stage one and move toward coordinated regional development in China.

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Notes

  1. Under the results of comparing the three rates of capital depreciation (as 5%, 9.6% and 10.96%), we chose 9.6%. For the specific calculation results, please contact the authors. And you can see the paper by Shan Haojie (2008) for the specific calculation and selection process.

  2. The method of measurement and process are specifically introduced in Chen’s article (2014); you can see it in the reference.

  3. Theil’s entropy measure or called Theil index was named by Theil (1967) using the entropy concept in information theory to calculate income inequality.

  4. In 1943, Hirschman published a paper in the Journal of American Statistical Association, inventing the ‘Hirschman index’ (the ‘Gini coefficient’), but this indicator was mistaken by scholars to the name of Gini. In 1964, Hirschman published ‘the paternity of an index’ in the American Economic Review to clarify the right to invent this indicator.

  5. In this article, we use the quantiles selection of 10,000 sets of data, and finally, the average of the quantiles is taken as the specific value of this paper. For specific simulation calculation procedures, please contact the author.

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Acknowledgements

The first author's research was supported by the National Social Science Fund Project (No. 16BTJ015). The second author's research was supported by Capital University of Economics and Business, Postgraduate Academic Newcomer Program Project Funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Statistics, Capital University of Economics and Business, Beijing, 100070, China

    Qiang Liu, Shengxia Xu & Xiaoli Lu

  2. Beijing Key Laboratory of Megaregions Sustainable Development Modelling, Beijing, 100070, China

    Qiang Liu

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  1. Qiang Liu
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  2. Shengxia Xu
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  3. Xiaoli Lu
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Correspondence to Shengxia Xu.

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Liu, Q., Xu, S. & Lu, X. Imbalance measurement of regional economic quality development: evidence from China. Ann Reg Sci 65, 527–556 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-020-00994-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00168-020-00994-4

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