An Empirical Study on the Contribution of Land to the Economic Growth in the China's Yangtze River Delta

The aim of this paper is to explore the contribution of land to economic growth in the Yangtze River Delta during the period of 1991 to 2006. After clustering the 16 cities into three groups, namely, one core city, five sub-center cities and ten peripheral cities, the author further takes advantage of recent developments of series co-integration techniques to deal with the endogeneity of variables. The results demonstrate that, firstly, the core city of Shanghai exhibits the highest contribution of land to economic growth but the contribution rate shows a tendency of gradual decline. Secondly, in the five sub-center cities including Nanjing, Hangzhou, Suzhou, Wuxi and Ningbo, though the contribution of land is lower than that in Shanghai, the contribution rate presents an evidently ascending trend. And thirdly, in the other ten peripheral cities, the contribution of land is the least while the contribution rate takes on a weak uptrend. In general, the contribution of land correlates with the level of economic development while the contribution rate takes an inverse U with the economic level. Therefore, it is critical for all cities in the Yangtze River Delta to improve the efficiency of land-use and transform from extensive economy into intensive economic development as soon as possible.JEL Classification: O18, R14