Export-led Growth: Application to China's Provinces, 1978-2001

China's economic development has in many ways taken the world by storm, and no part of the country has been left fully unaffected. Many attempts have been made to explain the sources of this rapid, yet uneven, development. Previous studies on the specific relationship between growing exports and economic growth provide important information on the issue, but results from individual provinces are lacking. To fill the gap, this paper reviews the basic empirical question defined by the export-led growth (ELG) hypothesis, i.e. whether growth in exports drives growth in GDP, at the provincial level. The ELG hypothesis is validated in 13 of the 27 provinces in the sample.