Analyzing spatial disparities of economic development in Yellow River Basin, China

Economic density refers to the degree of labor, population, and tangible capital that concentrate in a physical space. It represents the efficiency of economic activities and intensity of land use in an area. This article presents an in-depth analysis spatial disparity of economic densities in Yellow River Basin in China by using 2000 and 2014 country level data. A composite index of economic density that integrates a suite of population, land, and production indicators through a grey-relation entropy model was applied for the spatial analysis in economic densities. The overall economic density levels in Henan Province and Shandong Province were higher than those of other provinces. Other major spatial agglomerations of counties with high economic density were in central parts of Inner Mongolia and Henan Province, the south of Shanxi Province, and the middle regions of Shaanxi Province. Finally, the indicators that might have influenced the level of economic density and the formation spatial economic disparity within Yellow River Basin were identified as the basic environmental conditions, transportation infrastructure, social and economic infrastructure, level and structure of industrialization level, and strategic policies for regional economic development. The results show that there is indeed spatial economic disparity in the studied region and that it may have been mainly affected by the geographically uneven distribution of per capita income and per capita land use intensity.