促进西部欠发达地区经济增长的最优城市规模研究——基于知识溢出效应的实证

On the Optimal City Scale for Promoting Economic Growth in Underdeveloped Areas in Western China——Empirical Study Based on Knowledge Spillover Effect

缩小区域经济发展差距,使生活在国内任何区域的居民能共享改革开放的发展成果是历届政府的共同目标,如何利用城市发展的外部性缩小区域差距是本文的出发点。从知识溢出和城市发展水平的角度出发,利用1999—2015年的面板数据,运用系统GMM估计方法,对我国近十几年的区域经济增长动力做实证检验。研究发现,当单独考察各项知识溢出对区域经济增长的作用时,MAR效应是推动我国区域经济增长的主要动力,但加入城市发展水平来观察各项溢出的作用时,则各项溢出效应对区域经济增长的作用都十分明显,尤其以Jacobs效应最为显著。结合城市规模因素分析得出:中国100万以上人口的大城市是促进各种溢出效应发挥作用的最优规模。因此,提出西部欠发达地区应发展百万人口的大城市以缩小区域差距的建议。

Reducing the regional economic development gap to guarantee residents living in any region of China can share the development achievements of reform and opening up is the common goal of successive governments.This paper starts with how to use the externalities of urban development to narrow the regional gap.From the perspective of knowledge spillover and urban development level,this paper uses the panel data from1999to2015with the system GMM estimation method to empirically test the regional economic growth momentum of China in the past decade.The study found that when examining the effects of knowledge spillovers on regional economic growth,the MAR effect is the main driving force for China′s regional economic growth.However,when adding the level of urban development to observe the effects of various spillovers,the spillover effects demonstrate important role of regional economic growth,especially the Jacobs effect being the most significant.Combined with the analysis of urban scale factors,it is concluded that the large cities with a population over1million in China are the optimal scale to promote various spillover effects.In order to narrow the regional gap,large cities with a population of one million should be developed in the less developed areas of the West China.