本文主要针对我国改革开放以来地区间经济发展的差距究竟是扩大(发散)还是缩小(收敛)的问题开展了研究。首先,对全国各省(市)1980-2008年的人均名义GDP数据进行了空间自相关分析,探讨了全国区域经济发展的地区差异变化,揭示了1984年以后中国各地区之间的经济发展的正空间自相关关系,即全国区域经济发展差异在整体上是收敛的。本文进一步引入传统经济研究方法的σ-收敛模型进一步论证全国区域经济发展差异的整体收敛性。σ-收敛模型的研究结果表明,中国区域经济发展在20世纪80年代期间是收敛的,90年代则呈现一定的发散特征,从90年代末到2008年恢复收敛态势,且在整体趋势上是收敛的。该研究尝试了将空间分析方法引入经济发展收敛性与发散性研究的途径,并实证了其可靠性。

The heterogeneity of regional economic development is one of the hottest research fields among regional sustainable development topics. In this paper, the study was focused on the issue whether the gap of economic development level between regions was expanded (divergence) or narrowed (convergence) since China's reform and opening up. The spatial autocorrelation analysis of nominal GDP per capita data of provinces and municipalities in China during 1980-2008 were made and the provincial differences of economic development level were analyzed. Research results showed that there were significant positive spatial correlations in the overall situation after 1984 between provinces in China in the economic development, and the positive spatial correlation between provinces became more and more significant and strong as time went on. One of the most intuitionistic inferences of this research result was that the gap of economic development level between provinces in China was narrowed during 1980-2008 and the gap converging speed of economic development level between provinces in China was rising. In other words, the differences of regional economic development in China were converged in the overall. In addition, we introduced the traditional methods of σ-convergence model of economic studies to test and verify the conclusions of spatial correlation analysis. The σ values in each year were calculated by using the 1980-2008 real GDP per capita, which proved the correctness of the inference: the difference of economic development level between provinces in China was convergent during the 1980s, temporarily divergent in the early and middle 1990's and convergent again from the late 1990s to 2008, and the overall trend of the gap change of economic development level between provinces in China was converged. These results demonstrated the reliability and importance of using the spatial analysis method to analysis the convergence and divergence of economic development. This research could be used as a scientific reference for regional development in China.