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

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Abstract

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.

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Acknowledgements

The project reported in this article has been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant No. 41601175), the Foundation and Advanced Technology Research Plan of Henan Province (Grant No. 152300410067), the Key Scientific Research Project of Henan Province (Grant No. 16A610001), the Philosophy Social Sciences Planning Project of Henan Province (2014CJJ016), and by the generous support from Program for Innovative Research Team (in Science and Technology) in University of Henan Province (Grant No. 16IRTSTHN012).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environment and Planning, Henan University, Kaifeng, 475004, Henan, People’s Republic of China

    Pengyan Zhang, Bo Pang, Yanyan Li, Jianjian He & Hui Zheng

  2. Collaborative Innovation Center of Urban-Rural Coordination Development, Henan, 450046, China

    Pengyan Zhang

  3. The Department of Geography, Kent State University, Kent, OH, 44240, USA

    Xin Hong

  4. School of Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, The University of Texas at Dallas, Dallas, 75080, USA

    Chengzhe Qin

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  1. Pengyan Zhang
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  2. Bo Pang
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Correspondence to Pengyan Zhang or Hui Zheng.

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Zhang, P., Pang, B., Li, Y. et al. Analyzing spatial disparities of economic development in Yellow River Basin, China. GeoJournal 84, 303–320 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-018-9860-9

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