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毕业设计（论文）外文文献翻译译文题目：学生姓名：专业：指导教师：年月日Short communicationWhat has caused regional inequality in China?Dennis Tao YANG*Department of Economics, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Pamplin Hall 0316,Blacksburg, VA 24061, USAReceived 20 August 2002; accepted 29 September 2002One important property of the neoclassical growth model is its prediction of convergence—poor nations or regions tend to catch up with the rich ones in terms of the level of per capita product or income. While empirical findings from cross-country studies remain controversial, there is ample evidence for convergence across regions within countries.Examples include the US states, Japanese prefectures, and European regions (see Barro & Sala-i-Martin, 1999). The relative homogeneity in technology, preferences, and institutions facilitates regional convergence.Contrary to international experience, regional inequality in China has risen in the past two decades, a somewhat puzzling phenomenon as market-oriented reforms should facilitate resource flows that tend to equalize factor returns across regions. According to recent research, the high inequality is attributable primarily to a large rural–urban income gap and growing inland–coastal disparity. The ratio of urban–rural income and consumption hovered between 2 and 3.5 since the inception of reform, a level much higher than the majority of countries in the world (e.g. Yang & Cai, in press). Meanwhile, per capita production and consumption diverged across China’s regions—the initially rich coastal provinces were better off and the interior provincesbecame relatively disadvantaged during the reform period(Fleisher & Chen, 1997; Kanbur & Zhang, 1999; Yao & Zhang, 2001). Overall, the indices of regional inequality first showed moderate declines, but then rose. Towards the end of 1990s,they gradually climbed to peak historical levels during the Great Leap Famine (Kanbur &Zhang, 2002).While past research has documented these patterns of regional development, little has been done to investigate empirically the determinants of the widening inequality. In what follows, I would like to outline a few hypotheses on factors that may have strongly influenced the observed trends of income distribution. I suggest that sector- and region-biased policies and institutions may have been the main culprit for the high regional inequality in China. These arguments call for further empirical research, as well as reforms in input markets for achieving more balanced regional development.A historical factor that contributed to China’s regional income variations is the heavy industry-oriented development strategy pursued vigorously by the government during the pre reform era. In order to accelerate the pace of industrialization, the state extracted massive amount of resources from agriculture mainly through the suppression of agricultural prices and restrictions on labor mobility. Despite some effort to move industry towards the less developed interior regions and the rural industrialization drive during the Great Leap Forward, the development strategy resulted in a large rural–urban income gap. The main mechanisms of enforcing the strategy were a trinity of institutions that included the unified procurement and sale ofagricultural commodities, the people’s communes, and the household registration system. Since urbanization varied widely across regions, the high rural–urban disparity translated directly into regional inequality in the central planning era. It follows that when the heavy industry emphasis was gradually abandoned during reforms, the narrowing of the rural–urban income gap, and thus regional inequality, was to be expected.Indeed, sectoral and regional income differences declined in the initial years of reform,due in large part to the successful rural reforms that quickly raised farmers’earnings.However, the decline was short-lived; it was followed by a steady increase in rural–urban disparity starting in 1985. Yang and Cai (in press) argue that a set of urban-biased fiscal and monetary policies were largely responsible for the upswing, replacing the heavy-industry oriented development strategy as the tool of maintaining urban bias. When the cost of living in cities rose due to steady increases in agricultural prices, urban residents reacted by putting political pressure on the government and fighting for a greater share in the fruits of economic reforms. Because the government was concerned with economic and political stability, the state succumbed to pressure by installing income transfer programs in favor of the urban sector.Urban price subsidy is an aspect of the programs. For instance, in 1985 when meat prices were liberalized, the government raised total price subsidies to 26.2 billion yuan, a more than threefold increase from the 1979 level of 7.9 billion yuan. The total subsidies reached a peak of 71.2 billion yuan in 1998, which accounted for7.6% of government’s total budget.As another component of transfers, the government subsidies to the urban-based, loss making SOEs totaled 232.5 billion yuan for the period 1986–1990 and 206.1 billion yuan for 1991–1995, accounting for approximately 19% and 9% of state revenue in the twoperiods, respectively. Moreover, preferential credit allocations to the state sector helped sustain a higher rate of wage growth relative to their output growth throughout the same period (Yang & Cai, in press). When these urban-specific fiscal and credit transfers contributed significantly to the high level of inflation, it had a direct effect on reducing relative rural earnings.An increase in rural–urban disparity translates directly to overall inequality. A World Bank(1997) study shows that the urban–rural income gap is responsible for a third of the total inequality in 1995 and a half of the increase in inequality since 1985. These findings are corroborated by empirical evidence based on household survey data (Yang, 1999).Over a longer time period, China’s regional development strategies since reform may have contributed directly to the widening spatial income variations. As early as 1980, China formally established four special economic zones in the coastal provinces of Guangdong and Fujian, and in 1984, another 14 coastal cities were opened in order to attract foreign direct investment and trade. These special economic zones and coastal open areas acquired considerable autonomy, enjoyed superior tax treatments, and received preferential resource allocations (Litwack & Qian, 1998). As part of the Coastal Area Development Strategy, the governmentgradually extended these special policies to all coastal areas in the late 1980s.Although many cities in the interior regions were eventually opened in 1994, these time lags may have differential effects on attracting investments and generating growth, putting the noncoastal provinces at significant disadvantages. Throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, the coastal provinces attracted disproportionately high shares of foreign investments and trade and became the cradle of rural enterprises, which have been the deriving force behind China’s income growth. During this period, the income levels of interior and coastal regions diverged.As a result, the inland–coastal contribution to overall inequality increased several folds,becoming the largest component in the regional inequality decomposition (Kanbur & Zhang,1999; Yao & Zhang, 2001). From growth regressions, Demurger et al. (in press) find that referential investment and trade policies contributed directly to the differences in provincial growth rates.Sector- and region-biased policies would have limited impact on spatial income distribution if inputs were freely mobile across provinces. This is a standard implication of the neoclassical growth model with diminishing return technology in which factor movements tend to equalize input returns across geographic locations. Unfortunately, restrictions and obstacles to factor mobility still prevail in China despite continuous progress with reform andthe dominance of competitive forces in the final goods markets. Institutions and policies that obstruct factor movements across regions include explicit regulations on labor mobility,preferential employment opportunities for local residents, poor housingmarkets, pension and health care arrangements, and high costs of child care and education for migrant families.These institutional factors reinforce the effects of sector- and region-biased policies on spatialdisparity.So far, I have emphasized fiscal and credit policies, regional development strategy, and factor market distortions as the main causes of rising regional inequality in China. This is not an exhaustive list; other factors may have played important roles. Initial economic conditions at the inception of reform, including physical and human capital stocks, may have worked against convergence. For example, advantageous geographic factors may reduce transportation and communication costs, which in turn may attract more foreign direct investments and migrant labor (Demurger et al., in press). The realization of these topographic advantages in coastal provinces may contribute to the diversity inProvincial growth. In another recent study, Kanbur and Zhang (2002) show empirical evidence that fiscal decentralization and trade liberalization have also systematically affected regional inequality.Rising regional disparity may cause social and economic instability, leading to a situation in which lagging regions could obstruct the nation’s overall economic growth. In search for solutions, reliable empirical analysis is needed to shed light on the magnitude and mechanisms through which economic and policy variables affectinequality. The new findings would not only contribute to our understanding of regional development in China, but would also help policymakers in designing appropriate regional economic policies. As implied above, a gradual removal of sectoral and regional biases in institutions and policies would help reduce disparity.An important additional benefit would be to increase the rate of economic growth when appropriate regional policies promote more efficient use of productive inputs. It would be a mistake to install other institutions and policies to counter the old ones. AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank Belton Fleisher, Elliott Parker, Bruce Reynolds, and Xiaobao Zhang for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper.是什么原因造成中国的地区不平衡发展？新古典增长模型的一个重要属性是对趋同性的预测，即在人均水平的产品或收入方面穷的国家或地区往往倾向于赶上富国。