School of Economics and Business Administration, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
Center for Public Economy & Public Policy Research, Chongqing University, Chongqing, China.
PLoS One. 2021 Sep 23;16(9):e0257456. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257456. eCollection 2021.
The slowdown of China's economic growth in the middle-income stage has caused widespread concerns. Based on the analysis of economic structures to explain the downward trend of economic growth, this study expanded the Solow-Swan model to investigate the structural imbalances and evaluated their impacts during the structural transformation in different stages and regions on the economic downturn. Considering the processes of production, distribution, and consumption, six structures were chosen for national and prefecture-levels in China from 1997 to 2017, including sectoral structure, population structure, investment and consumption structure, import-export structure, urban-rural income structure, and financial structure. The study found that China's comprehensive economic structure was significantly different before and after the middle-income stage, and structural bonus tended to decline. Structural imbalance presented a U-shaped pattern of decreasing first and then increasing, and the impact on economic growth underwent stages of suppression-promotion-suppression. There was a significant difference in the imbalance of six sub-structures and their impacts; furthermore, in the four regions of east, center, west, and northeast the observations were very different. Taken together, the imbalance of economic structure and economic transformation coexisted, and the economic growth slowed down. Based on the experiences from China, this paper provided some evidence for promoting structural optimization and transformation.
中国从中等收入阶段经济增长放缓引起了广泛关注。本文基于经济结构分析来解释经济增长的下降趋势，将索洛-斯旺模型扩展到研究结构失衡，并在不同阶段和地区的结构转型过程中评估其对经济下滑的影响。考虑到生产、分配和消费过程，从 1997 年到 2017 年，本研究选择了中国国家和省级的六个结构，包括部门结构、人口结构、投资和消费结构、进出口结构、城乡收入结构和金融结构。研究发现，中国的综合经济结构在进入中等收入阶段前后有显著差异，结构红利趋于下降。结构失衡呈现出先降后升的 U 型模式，对经济增长的影响经历了抑制-促进-抑制的阶段。六个子结构及其影响的不平衡程度存在显著差异；此外，东部、中部、西部和东北地区的观察结果也存在很大差异。总之，经济结构失衡和经济转型并存，经济增长放缓。基于中国的经验，本文为促进结构优化和转型提供了一些证据。
