Abstract: Technical efficiency is one of the key determinants of economic growth, while technological environment is a critical factor affecting technical efficiency. In order to accelerate economic growth, it is important to understand the impact of technological environment on technical efficiency. The elements of technological environment, such as scientific and technological human resource, government expenditure on technology development, and scale of high-tech industry are identified. By using a Stochastic Frontier Analysis(SFA) model, the technical efficiency of 28 provinces(autonomous regions, and municipalities directly under the central government) in China during the period between 2000 and 2006 as well as the impact of technological environment on it are estimated. The empirical result shows that there is a big gap among regions in terms of technical efficiency. The average technical efficiency of eastern region is significantly higher than that of middle and western regions. And the technical efficiency of almost all regions appears to decline over time. Moreover, scientific and technological human resource, government expenditure on technology development, and scale of high-tech industry are negatively correlated with the loss of technical efficiency at a significant level. Based on the above result, policy implications are discussed in the end.

Key words: technical efficiency, regional economic growth, technological environment, SFA