Production factor changes, spatial spillovers, and regional economic growth in China

Changes in production factors have an important impact on the evolution of the spatial pattern of regional economic development. Based on the panel data of 290 prefecture-level cities in 1990-2020, the Mann Kendall method was applied to classify China's municipal economic growth into two stages—1990-2012 and 2013-2020, and the Malmquist productivity index and spatial Durbin model were further used to analyze the effects of changes in production factors on China's regional economic growth at different stages. The results show that: 1) China's regional economy has always maintained its growth trend, and the regional economic growth areas have gradually shifted from the eastern coastal areas to the inland areas, and the growth pattern has changed from an obvious east-west difference to a coexistence of east-west and north-south differences. 2) There are clear differences in the spatial distribution pattern of changes in production factors. The regions with a large proportion of capital stock have gradually shifted from a contiguous distribution in the northeast and the Bohai Rim to the southeast coastal region, while sporadically distributed in core cities in the central and western regions; the pattern of incremental employment is consistently high in the southeast and low in the northwest, with high-value areas mainly distributed in the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Chengdu-Chongqing urban agglomerations; the level of capital deepening and factor input-output efficiency generally show a year-on-year upward trend, and the core urban agglomerations are still the ones with higher levels of capital deepening and efficiency. 3) The degree of influence of factor changes on regional economic growth varied over time and at different scales, with factor input-output efficiency and the number of people employed being the main contributors to regional economic growth in the two periods, respectively. The research findings can serve as a decision-making reference for China's economic development under the new circumstance.