A study on the urban competitiveness of two-straits

Abstract

This study attempts to help cities enhance their competitiveness, doing so primarily by demonstrating the competitiveness of individual cities through economic indicators. This study focuses primarily on 20 major cities in Taiwan and China. Using annual data for each city over the period 2001–2007, this study observes the relative efficiency of major cities on both sides of the Taiwan Strait with the authentication of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model and Bootstrap confidence interval model. This study measures the long-term competitiveness achieved through urban changes through the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) and also measures the structural productivity changes to understand the strengths and weaknesses of individual cities as well as differences in their competitiveness, and to establish future development directions for each city. Finally, this study applies the Bootstrap to obtain an accurate confidence interval for evaluating the accuracy of various efficiency indicators through the MPI. Based on multi-input and multi-output data, this study examines whether the main cities in Taiwan and China use their resources effectively to enhance urban efficiency of competitiveness and provide inefficient cities with suggestions on improvement.

Keywords:

• urban competitiveness
• data envelopment analysis
• Bootstrap
• Malmquist productivity index

JEL Classification:

• O18
• R00

Acknowledgement

The authors thank the National Science Council of the Republic of China, Taiwan, for financially supporting this research under Contract No. NSC 98–2410-H-309–007.