Reasearch on the spatial autocorrelation of economic growth in Shandong Province based on county scale

This paper, with the help of global and local spatial autocorrelation methods, analyzed the spatial differences among the level of regional economic development and the economic growth rate in Shandong Province with data of county GDP per capita and GDP per capita growth rate from 1995 to 2007. The results showed that: (1) in the study period, the spatial difference among the county-level economy in Shandong Province overall became narrow. (2)The spatial disparities among county-level economy in Shandong Province have decreased continuously. Even the centre region of Shandong Province, which the spatial differences were quite large, begins to develop rapidly with the development of the neighbor areas. (3) In the study period, the average growth rate of county-level economy in Shandong Province demonstrated aggregated distribution. High-high and low-low areas obviously represent spatial differential, the high-high cluster in Shandong Peninsula while low-low cluster in westsouth of Shandong. The growth rate of high-developed Shandong peninsula is high-high aggregated, while the growth rate of the less-developed southwest region is low-low aggregated. It indicates that the unbalance of regional economy development in Shandong province will further aggravate.