Misallocation indices of factors.

Factor price distortions and resource misallocation are important sources of productivity differences between regions. Promoting the free flow of factors of production is conducive to giving full play to the decisive role of the market in allocating resources, which is crucial to helping a country’s economy develop in a high-quality and sustainable manner. This paper proposes a new approach to measuring factor market distortions and establishes the relationship between factor price distortions and a country’s economic growth. This paper examines the resource misallocation and efficiency loss of 31 provinces in China from 2004 to 2020, and proposes an analytical framework for resource misallocation among regions, with which the Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and the factor price distortion of provinces in China are calculated. The calculation results indicate that the TFP of China’s provinces gradually declines from the eastern coast to the western inland. The resource allocation efficiency in the eastern and central areas is higher than that in the western areas, so is the factor price, and its distortion causes nearly 6% of loss of output value in China. China’s economic growth is still reliant on the increase of factor input and technological development and the improvement of resource allocation efficiency has no significant effect on growth.

要素价格扭曲与资源错配是造成区域间生产率差异的重要诱因。推动生产要素自由流动，有助于充分发挥市场在资源配置中的决定性作用，对于一国经济实现高质量、可持续发展至关重要。本文提出一种测算要素市场扭曲的全新方法，并厘清了要素价格扭曲与一国经济增长之间的关联机制。本文以中国2004-2020年31个省份为研究样本，考察了其资源错配与效率损失情况，并构建了区域间资源错配的分析框架，借此测算中国各省份的全要素生产率（Total Factor Productivity，TFP）与要素价格扭曲程度。测算结果显示，中国各省份的全要素生产率由东部沿海向西部内陆呈逐步递减态势。东中部地区的资源配置效率高于西部地区，要素价格水平亦呈现相同的梯度特征；要素价格扭曲致使中国总产值损失近6%。中国经济增长仍依赖要素投入增加与技术进步，资源配置效率的提升对经济增长并未产生显著影响。