Are small towns really inefficient? A data envelopment analysis of sampled towns in Jiangsu province, China

Xu Yin, Jing Wang, Yurui Li, Zhiming Feng and Qianyi Wang

Land Use Policy, 2021, vol. 109, issue C

Abstract: Small towns, the nodes connecting cities and villages, play an important role in urbanization and rural development. However, it is generally believed that small towns lack economic efficiency therefore are excluded from main-stream urbanization of China. Based on the socio-economic statistics of 109 towns in 7 counties of Jiangsu province, this paper evaluates the DEA efficiency of small towns with different classifications, and compares the DEA efficiency of small towns with 21 county-towns, then analyzes the economic density of small towns and 283 prefecture-level cities with different scales. The results show that: (1) There are significant differences in the efficiency characteristics of different types of towns. Approximately 80% of the sampled towns could improve their efficiency by intensive resource-use and production scale expansion; (2) Although county-towns obtained more resources, their efficiency is not significantly superior than other types of towns (P > 0.05); (3) Small towns perform well in terms of economic density, which is not significantly different from small and medium-sized cities, but significantly lower than large cities with population of municipal district > 1 million. These findings challenge the stereotypes of towns in driving urbanization. The authors argue that the economic development level, input-output efficiency and economic density of small towns can also be high, shaping their important role in integrating urban and rural development, accelerating new-type urbanization and promoting rural vitalization strategy.

Keywords: Small towns; Intensive land use; Input and output efficiency; Data envelopment analysis; Economic density; China; Rural vitalization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:109:y:2021:i:c:s0264837721003136

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2021.105590

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