Research on the Convergence of Regional Economic Growth in China

The study was designed to analyze the economic growth convergence from year 2008 to 2015 in 19 coastal and border provinces (districts) in China. To provide a more comprehensive and objective analysis on the economic growth, we collected real GDP per capita of 19 selected provinces in the 8 years, and utilized four distinct methods of econometrics, which are sigma - Convergence, absolute beta - Convergence, club convergence and quantile regression. sigma - Convergence was conducted in Gini coefficient method and Theil index methods. And we used SLM model and SEM model to explore the effect of spatial interaction in beta - Convergence. The results suggests that the economic growth of overall provinces shows the trend of sigma - Convergence, and there exists absolute beta - Convergence in coastal and border provinces. However, there is no co-integration between the two regions. The study is of some importance in the state policy on economic growth.