A Study On The Influence Of Port Evolution On The Development Of Agricultural Economy Based On Division Of Labor And Transaction Cost

Since China’s reform and opening-up, the economic exchange between China and other countries has become more and more frequent. Especially in recent years, with the rapid development of our country’s economy, agriculture economy connection between Chinese inland provinces and the world has become stronger and stronger. A large number of agriculture goods comes in and goes out of inland areas through seaports. China’s agricultural economic development and port construction is entering a rapid development stage, and many new features are appearing. Inland agriculture economy and coastal ports have more and more interaction. Port has more and more direct and indirect effects on agricultural economic development. Exploring the inner mechanism of the connection between ports and agricultural economy in hinterlands can help us to learn the characteristics of the developing relationship between ports and agricultural economy. It is also of great help to the healthy and rapid development of agricultural economy according to the port law of development.Based on the division of labor and transaction cost, two question are researched about "what is the inner mechanism of the relationship between port and the agricultural economic development in hinterland and how to make use of its internal mechanism to deal with the agricultural economic development?". From the perspective of System Theory, this paper constructs a "port and hinterland agricultural economy system" based on the theory of Spatial Economics, Industrial Economics and new Institutional Economics, Management Science and Environmental Science. This paper has also researched the functional mechanism of the transaction cost to the system, how ports influence the hinterland agricultural economy development in the system and how such extraneous variables as national port governance mode, port industry cluster and environmental governance change influence transaction cost and then the system.Firstly, this paper describes the "Port-agricultural economy in hinterland "system structure and the role of the agricultural products trade and industrial products trade in the process of the system structure evolution. Then, the paper measures the direct and indirect contribution that ports make to the agriculture economic growth. According to the data of the port development and agricultural economic growth, the causality between the port and its hinterland agricultural economic growth is demonstrated. Exponential model suggests that, in recent 10 years, ports have made the greatest contribution to central hinterland agricultural economic growth and less contribution to the western hinterland agricultural economic growth and the least to the coastal hinterland agricultural economic growth。The relations between Ningbo port and hinterland economy show that as the port scale is becoming bigger and bigger, the port’s contribution to the distant provinces is bigger and bigger. In recent 10 years, this direct contribution or indirect contribution of the coastal ports to the central hinterland agriculture is the biggest.Secondly, the influence of the harbor development to China agricultural economic space layout is researched. Guided by the theory of spatial economics, the impact of port development on the hinterland agricultural space layout is analyzed, and their spatial econometric relationship model is established, which points out the hinterland agriculture boundary that the port can radiate, and quantifies the relation between transaction cost and radiation distance. With the change of transaction cost, the relative position and scope of ports and the hinterland will be accordingly changed, including the change of ports, the hinterland range and agricultural space layout change. Such an interactive relationship is proved by the relationship between port changes and water transport of grain to the capital in ancient China and by effect of the evolution of modern Tianjin port on the spatial layout of hinterland agricultural economy. If food prices at home and abroad are sent into the potential function of transaction costs, result is that the greater the price variance is, the greater the variations of the area growing grain in central China will be. When imported food prices are less than domestic’s, range ability of coastal sown area is larger than that of the western region and smaller than that of the central region, especially in the aspect of soybean.The third part studies the influence of Chinese ports specialization development on the agricultural structure. The transaction cost of listed companies in the five major ports group in China, and the total amount of foreign trade of the corresponding provinces are used to construct the panel data model. The model shows that the inner mechanism of the agricultural port specialization development is to improve the efficiency and economic benefits and that the marginal contribution of the import and export growth and of the export ratio to port transaction efficiency is respectively 0.835190 and 1.300583, and the margin contribution of the foreign trade structure to the efficiency of the port trade is 1.5 times more than that of the total foreign trade. An empirical analysis shows that the increase of port efficiency leads to the extension of transporting rice and rice radiation hinterland and that the specialization of agricultural product ports raises the efficiency of soybean trade. In recent 10 years, transaction cost changes of port and hinterland agricultural economy in central area is bigger than that of coastal and western areas, namely the transaction costs change between port and hinterland agricultural economy in coastal hinterland is stabilized, or the relation between port and the western hinterland agricultural economy is still fragile. The rate change speed of wheat, corn, soybean and rice planting area in Central hinterland is different, which shows that local farmers tend to adjust agricultural product varieties according to the volume of potential function value.The fourth part studies the relationship between the governance of different ports and the development of agriculture economy. The association between HHI from 2002 to 2012 of five major ports along China’s coast and the transaction efficiency from 1997 to 2012 of the listed companies in the port groups is researched. The empirical research shows that port efficiency is positively related to the concentration of trading, and transaction efficiency and port throughput scale has a ladder-increase correlation, China port transaction efficiency and concentration are affected by port governance mode. From big to small ports, they follow "market dominant mode- central dominant mode-the local government leading mode". Then the internal labor division and competition for each big harbor group are studied. Then, the three aspects influence is illustrated on different port governance model for port and hinterland agricultural economy system, the first is the affecting on port trading efficiency; the second is the affecting on the port space layout; the third is the affecting on artificially increased agricultural specialized port.The last part of the paper studies the influence of the port industry cluster and the marine environmental governance on agricultural economic development. First, the background, the reason and the current situation of the immigration of China’s industry layout to the coast are analyzed and the near-shore marine environmental pollution pressure caused by China’s coastal industry and agriculture is also pointed out. Then, a near-shore marine bearing economy and industrial structure model is built, which shows hinterland carrying industry is associated with the port by two opposite forces, the port adsorbing industry and environmental governance driving industry. Finally, According to the logical order of the port promoting industry, industry regurgitation feeding agriculture, under the condition of high external dependency of Chinese economy, concentrating industry on the neighborhood of coastal ports is helpful to reducing transaction costs. Coastal economy develops faster than the Midwest, which has reached a stage of industry regurgitation feeding agriculture. The characteristic of port industrial cluster is obvious in coastal area and industry re-feeds agriculture with a strong character of industrial concentration feedback.