Telecommunications infrastructure and regional income convergence in China: panel data approaches

The conditional convergence framework constitutes the theoretical basis for different dynamic panel data approaches. But models with different specifications or estimated by different methods may have very different results. This study empirically tests the results by applying different panel data approaches to the study of telecommunications infrastructure in regional economic growth across China. Specifically, the pattern of regional economic growth across 29 regions in China from 1986 to 2002 is examined. The results suggest the system GMM estimation is more likely to produce consistent and efficient estimates than OLS and fixed-effect estimation. Findings indicate a significant and positive relationship between telecommunications infrastructure and regional economic growth in China and the empirical results from different estimations suggest robust results for this particular assessment.