关键词: 供给侧结构性改革, 技术创新, 消费升级, 产业结构

Abstract:    China′s economy has entered into the era of "the New Normal" and is at an important juncture which demands a change in development concepts, optimization of economic structure and a shift in growth drivers. However, under "the New Normal", the imbalance of supply and demand structure still exists for a long time, which may affect the long-term balanced growth of China′s economy. Therefore, it is an important topic to explore effective methods to unleash the potential of individual consumption, accelerate the establishment of a "dual circulation" development pattern, and further relieve the contradiction between the growing needs for a better life and the unbalanced and inadequate development.Prior research has focused on how relationship embedded between consumption upgrading and its influencing factors, with little attention on the role technological innovation played and its mechanism. This paper makes an attempt to examine these important yet unexplored issues. Therefore, based on the dynamic panel data of 30 provincial-level regions in China from 2006 to 2017, we addressed this gap by examining the channels through which technological innovation influences consumption upgrading from the perspective of the mediating effect of the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure. We first take DEA-malquist approach, including 3 input factors and 2 output factors, to proxy the level of regional technological innovation in China. We also add to the growing use of the classification of consumption upgrading into survival, enjoyment and development consumption. Most importantly, given that industrial solutions also contribute to improvement of consumption demand, we further introduce the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure into our framework to testify the possible mediating effect. Overall, this paper explores the dynamic relationship between technological innovation, the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure and the consumption upgrading. It is found that the consumption upgrading has a "Stickiness", demonstrating that the lag of the first stage consumption level has a positive impact on the current consumption. The dynamic empirical results also show a significant influence of technological innovation on consumption upgrading, identifying the essential role to break the "Stickiness". The higher the efficiency of technological innovation, the more conducive to promoting the transition from food and clothing consumption to development and enjoyment consumption. We then take one step forward to exploit the possible impact of industrial structure, and a mediating effect of the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure has been testified. Our work contributes to the relevant literature in the following aspects. First, we identify the relationship between technological innovation, the transformation and upgrading of industrial structure and the consumption upgrading in Chinese context. To the best of our knowledge, this channel is new to the literature on the realm of consumption upgrading research. Our study provides a complement to the literature on the mediating role played by industrial structure. Second, based on the testable hypothesis, the generalized method of moments (GMM) approach, instead of the traditional fixed-effect model, is employed to control for potential endogeneity and introduce dynamic effects in this paper. Third, our study adds to the literature by exploring the heterogeneity in different types of consumption upgrading. In addition, the testification of the impact of industrial structure allows us to shed light on the specific transmission channel to provide a more nuanced and complete understanding of the driving force for consumption upgrading in China. 

Key words: supply-side structural reform, technological innovation, consumption upgrading, industrial structure