边界效应、区际贸易与区域经济增长

【作者】 陈飞；

【导师】 安虎森；

【作者基本信息】 南开大学 ， 区域经济学， 2009， 博士

【摘要】 区域经济发展的不平衡是许多国家曾经或现在仍然面临的问题。我国的经济发展长期处于不平衡状态,这一状况不仅影响到社会的稳定,而且还制约着经济长期的持续稳定发展。上个世纪九十年代初,我国区域经济发展的不平衡问题开始引起学者和决策层的关注,学者们为解决这一问题提出了许多政策建议,中央政府也相继采取了一些政策措施。概括起来,这些决策和建议不外乎两大类:一是加大投资,改善那些发展相对落后的地区的基础设施状况,增加对相对落后地区的扶贫支持;二是给予那些发展相对落后的地区某些先行先试的优惠政策,让其自行探索适合本地区的发展路径。这些政策措施尽管取得了一定成效,但效果并不是很理想。贸易能够促进财富增长、增进国民福利,尽管经济学家早已认识到这一点,然而,以贸易为视角来分析经济增长特别是区域经济协调发展问题的文献相对还很少。经济学家们之所以没有重视贸易在区域经济发展中的作用,其原因主要有两个:一方面,在完全竞争和规模报酬不变(或递减)的主流经济学框架下,国际贸易在许多情况下是一种零和博弈,常常引发国与国之间的贸易战,尽管许多经济学家一直以来呼吁自由贸易,然而,长期以来,现实中国与国之间的贸易战比比皆是。另一方面,传统的主流经济学一直无法把空间/区位因素纳入进来,从而也使得主流经济学家们很难从贸易的视角分析一国内部区域经济增长问题。二十世纪九十年代初,克鲁格曼在规模收益递增和垄断竞争的框架下分析经济活动的区位,把空间要素纳入到竞争均衡的框架中来,研究各种产品贸易和生产要素的运动规律和机制,并通过这种规律与机制的分析探讨经济增长规律与途径,开创了新经济地理学,为人们认识和分析区域经济问题提供了新的研究思路和研究方法。垄断竞争和规模收益递增的分析框架能够把空间因素纳入到分析中来,探讨一国内部的区际贸易和区域经济增长问题。本文沿用这一分析框架,采取理论分析和实证检验相结合的研究方法,分析和探讨我国的区域经济增长问题。本文的内容可以分为四部分:第一部分主要是介绍本文的选题背景和选题意义、研究对象、研究方法以及与本文研究内容相关的理论综述。第二部分主要是理论分析,分别探讨内部规模经济下的区际贸易、内外部双规模经济下的贸易和发展以及贸易政策与区域经济的协调发展,分析产品贸易和资本流动的空间运行机制,揭示区际贸易促进区域经济增长的基本途径。第三部分是实证检验,通过统计数据对边界效应、贸易自由度、贸易量和区域协调发展等变量之间的关系进行实证分析。第四部分主要是根据前面的理论和实证分析,指出模型背后的经济涵义,提出区域贸易和发展的政策建议。通过理论和实证两个方面的分析,本文得出了以下几个基本结论:第一,通过扩大市场规模,区际贸易能够促进产品种类的增加,从而推动区域经济更快增长。第二,在产品和服务贸易、要素流动等主要依靠市场调节的情况下,如果缺乏有效且有力的政府干预,现已形成的核心—边缘结构(即现实中的区域经济不平衡问题)很难改变,这也是到目前为止我国政府采取的协调区域发展的政策措施不够理想的原因所在。第三,除了各地区的产业结构和各地区的市场规模以外,贸易自由度是影响区际贸易的重要因素。第四,区际、区内贸易自由度的大小对不同地区具有不同的含义,在不平衡的区域经济中,区际贸易自由度的提高使发达地区获得更高的生产份额,促进发达地区经济发展,同时使欠发达地区处于更不利的地位,拉大区域差距。对于欠发达地区,区内贸易自由度的提高,即优化区内经济环境,能够促进本地区的经济发展。第五,运输成本和边界效应(即本地消费倾向)是影响贸易自由度的两个重要因素。我国各省份间之所以存在边界效应,除了各地区的语言文化、风俗习惯等的差异以外,关键原因在于,一方面,我国还缺乏严格且完善的产品质量监管体系以及消费者权益保护体制,在产品质量等信息缺乏、产品价格相近的情况下,追求效用最大化的消费者可能更多选择本地产品;另一方面,由于现行的税收体制和各地区发展的考核体制,使得政府在消费中也倾向于选择本地产品。本文的研究还表明,生产的集中可以带来集聚收益,经济活动的空间集中(即集聚)在一定程度上比空间分散更有效率。然而,经济活动的集中往往带来区域发展的不平衡问题,效率和公平的抉择是决策者不得不面对的一个两难问题。改革开放以来,我们国家基本上采取的是“效率优先兼顾公平”的原则,这使我国经济发展取得了举世瞩目的成就。然而,从长远的角度来看,在纯粹的市场调节下,区域经济发展的不平衡会使得落后地区越来越贫穷、发达地区越来越富裕,即所谓的“马太效应”。区际贸易流量因落后地区市场规模的萎缩而下降,最终不利于整个国民经济的长期持续发展,因此,单纯依靠市场不可能完成促进区域经济协调发展、建设和谐社会的任务,必须发挥政府作用。更多还原

【Abstract】 Many countries used to be bothered by or are still facing the problem of imbalance in regional economic development. China’s economic development has long been in a state of imbalance, which not only affects the stability of society, but also restricts the long-term sustainable and stable economic development of the country. Since 1990s, scholars and decision-making organs began to pay attention to this problem. Scholars have come up with a number of suggestions, and the government has taken various measures. To sum up, such suggestions and measures can be divided into no more than two categories: First, increasing investment to improve the infrastructure of the relatively under-developed regions and to strengthen the support of poverty alleviation for those relatively backward regions; second, giving some preferential policies to those relatively under-developed areas and encouraging them to explore development paths suitable to their own situation. Those measures and policies have made some differences, but the reality is still far from satisfactory.Although economists have long been aware of the truth that trade can promote the growth of wealth and enhance national welfare, there have been few papers which analyze economic growth especially the problem of coordinated regional economic development in a perspective of trade. Why economists have not paid attention to the importance of trade in regional economic development? There are mainly two reasons: on the one hand, in the framework of mainstream economics - perfect competition and constant returns to scale (or decrease), international trade in many circumstances is a zero-sum game, which usually leads to trade wars among nations. Though many economists have been advocating free trade, there are numerous trade wars in reality; on the other hand, the traditional mainstream economics has not been able to add the spatial or locational factors into analysis, which makes it difficult for mainstream economists to analyze the issues of a country’s inter-regional economic growth through a trade perspective. In the early 1990s, P. Krugman analyzed the locations of regional economic activities in the framework of increasing scale returns and monopolistic competition, put spatial elements into the framework of competitive balance, and studied the laws and mechanisms of various products trade and the movement of production factors. Through this analysis, he explored ways and laws of economic growth, founded the New Economic Geography, and provided new ideas and research methods for people to recognize and analyze regional economic issues.The analytical framework of monopolistic competition and increasing scale returns can put spatial factors into analysis and explore the inter-regional trade and regional economic growth of a country. This dissertation adopts the above analytical framework, combines theoretical analysis and empirical testing, analyzes and discusses the problem of regional economic growth in China. It can be divided into four parts. The first part is to introduce the background and significance of the topic, the research subject, research methods and summary of relevant theories. The second part is mainly about theoretical analysis, exploring the inter-regional trade under the internal scale economy, trade and trade development under both internal and external scale economies, trade policy and the coordinated regional economic development, analyzing the operating spatial mechanisms of trade and capital flows, revealing the basic ways of inter-regional trade to promote regional economic growth. The third part is the empirical test through the analysis of statistical data, studying the relationship among border effect, freeness of trade, trade size and regional coordinated development. Part Four is based mainly on previous theoretical and empirical analysis, pointing out the economic meaning behind the model, giving some policy suggestions about regional trade and development.Through both theoretical and empirical analysis, this paper has come to the following basic conclusions. First, by expanding market size, inter-regional trade can promote the increase of the types of products, so as to enhance a faster growth of the regional economy. Second, in circumstances that products, services trade and factors flow mainly depend on market regulation, if there is no effective and strong government intervention, it is hard to change the already existing core - periphery structure (that is, the problem of regional economic imbalance in reality). And that is also the reason why our government has not come to satisfactory policies and measures to achieve coordinated regional development so far. Third, in addition to the industrial structures and market sizes of different regions, freeness of trade is also an important factor affecting the inter-regional trade. Fourth, freeness of the inter- and inner-regional trade has different implications for different regions. In a situation of regional economic imbalance, the increase of inter-regional trade freeness provides more production shares for those developed regions and promotes their economic development, but for those less developed regions it means a more disadvantaged position, widening the gap among regions. For those less developed regions, to enhance the inner-regional freeness of trade, that is, to optimize the regional economic environment, can promote their economic development. Fifth, transportation costs and border effects (that is, the local consumption propensity) are two important factors impacting the freeness of trade. Apart from the differences of language, culture and customs of various regions, the key reason for China’s existing inter-provincial border effects is that, on the one hand, China still lacks strict and perfect product quality control system, as well as consumer protection system, therefore, when lacking information about quality and the prices are similar, the consumers who pursue the maximization of utility may select more local products; on the other hand, because of the existing tax system and the regional development assessment systems, governments also tend to select local products in their purchases.This study also shows that the concentration of production can generate income concentration, and concentration of economic activities in space (that is, agglomeration) is, to a certain extent, more efficient than the spatial dispersion. However, the concentration of economic activities usually brings about the problems of uneven regional development, thus the choice between efficiency and equity becomes an inevitable dilemma for those decision-makers. Since reform and opening up, our government basically has taken the principle of "giving priority to efficiency with due consideration to fairness" and China has made outstanding economic achievements. However, from a long-term point of view, in pure market regulation, the regional imbalance of economic development will result in more and more poverty in under-developed regions, more and more wealth in affluent regions, which is the so-called "Matthew Effect". Inter-regional trade flows will decline due to the shrinking market size of the under-developed regions, which eventually is not conducive to long-term sustainable development of the entire national economy. Therefore, if we simply rely on the market, it is unlikely for us to accomplish the missions of promoting a coordinated development of regional economy and building a harmonious society. The government must play a role.更多还原