Author Description

This paper considers the persistent differences in economic performance across Chinese regions. We introduce a new county- and city-level dataset that spans all of mainland China and provides a detailed view of Chinese regional growth over the period 1997-2005. Non-parametric kernel density estimation is employed to establish the cross-sectional GDP per capita distribution, and the distributional dynamics are investigated using the probability matrix technique and associated stochastic kernel estimator. A set of explanatory variables is then introduced, and several regressions are run to test for conditional-convergence and to pinpoint influential factors for economic growth across counties and cities.