Analysis on the Spatial-Temporal Dynamics of Financial Agglomeration with Markov Chain Approach in China

The standard approach to studying financial industrial agglomeration is to construct measures of the degree of agglomeration within financial industry. But such measures often fail to exploit the convergence or divergence of financial agglomeration. In this paper, we apply Markov chain approach to diagnose the convergence of financial agglomeration in China based on the location quotient coefficients across the provincial regions over 1993–2011. The estimation of Markov transition probability matrix offers more detailed insights into the mechanics of financial agglomeration evolution process in China during the research period. The results show that the spatial evolution of financial agglomeration changes faster in the period of 2003–2011 than that in the period of 1993–2002. Furthermore, there exists a very uneven financial development patterns, but there is regional convergence for financial agglomeration in China.