Transport Infrastructure,Regional Trade Flow and Economic Growth Efficiency
Countries worldwide attach great importance to transportation infrastructure,for its development level profoundly affects the quality of a country's economic growth.Since the 21st century,China's transportation infrastructure has achieved leapfrog development.For example,expressway,high-speed railway and air transportation have accelerated the cross regional flow of productive factors such as population,capital,and technology and the process of market integration,as well as the three-dimensional,comprehensive and regional modem transportation network layout.Transportation infrastructure is the basic link to establish market connections,which is conducive to promoting the smooth flow of goods on a larger scale and improving the efficiency of market-oriented allocation of resources.Against the background of building a unified domestic market,cross regional transportation infrastructure has an irreplaceable role to promoting the full flow of resource,supporting the supply-demand balance of regional products,and prioritizing economic development efficiency.This paper establishes a multi-sector and multi-region spatial economic model to discuss the relationships among transport infrastructure,regional trade flow and economic growth efficiency in spatial general equilibrium.Theoretically,the reduction in transportation costs brought about by the construction of transport infrastructure is conducive to promoting the flow of goods,resources,and factors over a broader range,and improving economic growth efficiency by increasing regional trade flow.The analysis of Chinese urban data based on matching and integration shows that the rapid expansion of highway,railway,and high-speed railway can significantly increase regional trade flow.Further testing the mechanism that transport infrastructure affects the economic growth efficiency shows that highway,railway,high-speed railway,and aviation can improve economic growth efficiency through increasing regional trade flow.The above conclusion remains robust after considering different methods of measurement,as well as interference factors such as omitted variables and mutual causality.The contributions of this paper are three-fold.Firstly,this paper focuses on the efficiency of economic growth,rather than the scale or rate of economic growth.This paper analyzes how transportation infrastructure affects economic growth efficiency through increasing regional trade flow,and discusses how transportation infrastructure optimizes economic production efficiency in improving resource allocation efficiency,so it has novelty in research perspective and content.Secondly,a spatial economic model is established that includes mobile labor,depicts interregional trade,and reflects resource allocation.In this model,the transportation of goods mainly relies on transportation infrastructure,and the optimal transportation cost is defined as the lowest cost route decision of producers between different locations,resulting in economic growth issues in spatial general equilibrium.Thirdly,using the data of 284 cities in China from 2004 to 2019 to verify the theoretical hypothesis,this paper builds a highly refined distribution database of China's transportation network from the perspective of a comprehensive transportation network to explore the impact of highway,railway,high-speed railway and civil aviation on regional trade flow,and economic growth efficiency.This paper enriches research on the relationship between transport infrastructure and economic growth efficiency.It provides empirical evidence and important insights for transport infrastructure to promote the flow of commodity factors,break regional market segmentation,and improve resource allocation efficiency under the construction of a unified domestic market.When evaluating the costs and benefits of transportation infrastructure investment,decision-makers should fully consider the hidden cost,and pay attention to the practical problems of high investment cost,low use efficiency and repeated construction of projects.In general,it is necessary to optimize the role of transportation infrastructure in resource reallocation,relies on the government to break through the"administrative region economy"barrier and provide transportation guarantees for improving the efficiency of economic growth,building a unified domestic market,and building a new development pattern based on"dual circulation".
Transport InfrastructureEconomic Growth EfficiencySpatial General EquilibriumUnified Domestic Market
NETL
NSTL
万方数据
维普
