全要素生产率是否已经成为中国地区经济差距的决定力量?

提高全要素生产率是推动经济高质量发展的关键,而创新驱动与新旧动能转换将加剧全要素生产率的空间不平衡,给区域协调发展带来新的压力.文章首次尝试将关系数据分析范式应用于地区经济差距研究,采用2001?2015年中国分省数据,利用二次指派程序实证考察全要素生产率与中国地区经济差距之间的关系.基于全样本、分时期和逐年的实证研究表明,全要素生产率对中国地区经济差距存在正向影响,但其影响强度远低于资本积累和城市化.在地区经济差距的诸多影响因素中,资本积累和城市化始终扮演主要角色.尽管全要素生产率对地区经济差距的影响强度呈现上升态势,但在短期内很难超越资本积累和城市化而成为中国地区经济差距的决定力量.因此,区域协调发展战略的实施需要更加注重发挥资本要素的空间均衡配置和城市化的空间均衡发展对于缩小地区经济差距的关键作用.同时在深化供给侧结构性改革进程中,应该更加积极地推动新动能的空间均衡发展,从而促使全要素生产率成为新时期区域经济协调发展的新动力.

Has the Total Factor Productivity Become the Determinant of Regional Economic Disparity in China

The imbalance of regional development has become a major strategic issue that needs to be resolved urgently during the decisive stage in building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. Raising total factor productivity is the key in the stage of economic high-quality development. However, implement-ing the innovation-driven development strategy and replacing old growth drivers with new ones will intensify the spatial imbalance of total factor productivity (TFP), which will bring new pressures and challenges to the coordinated regional development in the new era. It is urgent to reveal the relationship between TFP and re-gional economic disparity, and answer the question whether the TFP has become the determinant of regional economic disparity in China. These factors determine not only whether TFP can become the key driver to nar-row the regional economic disparity and achieve the coordinated regional development, but also whether the supply-side structural reform and the coordinated regional development could integrate deeply.This paper applies the relational data paradigm to regional economic disparity for the first time. Based on China's provincial data from 2001 to 2015, we explore the relationship between TFP and the regional econom-ic disparity in China by using the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP). According to QAP-based correla-tion analysis, there is a significant positive correlation between TFP and regional economic disparity, but com-pared with other factors, the relationship between them is the least intimate. Based on the full, sub-period and year-by-year sample QAP-based regression analysis shows that whether considering the control variables or not, TFP has a positive impact on the regional economic disparity. Although the impact of TFP on regional economic disparity is increasing, it has not become the determinant of China's regional economic disparity. The capital accumulation and urbanization play major roles in China's regional economic disparity. The ro-bustness test which the capital stock accounting based on different capital depreciation rates shows that the conclusions of this paper are robust.The enlightenment of this paper is that in the process of implementing the coordinated regional develop-ment strategy, we must pay particularly attention to exert the sufficient effect of the balanced allocation of cap-ital elements and the balanced development of urbanization in order to narrow the regional economic disparity. Meanwhile, in the process of furthering supply-side structural reform, we must actively promote the spatial balanced development of new drivers and make TFP become a new driving force of the coordinated regional development in the new era.The marginal academic contribution of this paper is that we apply the relational data paradigm in the study of regional disparity for the first time. It provides a new paradigm for exploring the causes of regional economic disparity and some new empirical evidence to reveal the impact of TFP on regional economic dis-parity. As the disparity between any two regions is essentially a kind of relationship, it creates the conditions for exploring regional disparities from the angle of relational data. This paper also provides a new perspective for the study of regional disparity in a broader sense.