Impact of Administrative Context on Regional Economic Inequality in Transitional China

Authors: Jingjing Li*, Henan University, Changhong Miao, Professor, Henan University
Topics: China, Regional Geography
Keywords: administrative context, regional economic inequality, shift-share analysis, transitional China
Session Type: Paper
Day: 4/12/2018
Start / End Time: 3:20 PM / 5:00 PM
Room: Galerie 4, Marriott, 2nd Floor
Presentation File: No File Uploaded

Although regional inequality research of transitional China is the academic hot topic, the impact of administrative context on it has not been fully addressed. To deal with this issue, the paper adopts a multi-scale framework, and demonstrates that the impacts of administrative context on regional economic inequality vary across economic development phases and regions. Specifically, the county-level economic inequality has increased and declined from 1990-2000 and 2000-2014 respectively. Moreover, the inequality among high-level development regions is shrinking over time, which is in contrast to the disparity among low-level development regions. Thus, this paper contributes to the debates that whether regional disparity is enlarged or shrunk under administrative context’s impact. In addition, the underlying driving forces are also discussed.