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Transportation Infrastructure, Factor Mobility And Manufacturing Location

Posted on:2011-06-21Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:X H RenFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119330338482726Subject:Technical Economics and Management
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Since the reform and opening-up, development of different degrees has been realized throughout China. But good wishes based on the"new classical economics growth"convergence hypothesis (Barro and Xala-i-Martin, 1995) has not been realized yet. On the contrary, the gap between areas in China is widening, and it suggests a more serious challenge for new classical growth theory. Because of the introduction of spatial dimensions, new economic geography which raised in the 1990s is more convincing compared to the conventional economics in the interpretation of industrial agglomeration and regional gap. As the new economic geography claims that there is endogenous relation between factor mobility and regional income disparity, and it is the imbalance of industrial development that causes regional disparities on a large scale (Krugman, 1991; Baldwin et al., 2003), hence, the spatial distribution of economic activity has aroused widespread concern once again as a main reflection of regional industrial development balance. Traditional location theory and new economic geography emphasize on the role which transportation costs play in the spatial distribution of economic activities, meanwhile, transportation costs are believed to be the most significant factor that affect the factor mobility and industrial location. nonetheless, with the traffic flow continuously improved and the importance of non-material gradually increased, transportation costs declines at the meantime, transportation costs play a much smaller role in industrial distribution when the transportation infrastructure stock reaches a certain level, according to the Krugman's core-periphery model, when the transportation costs reach an extremely low level, industry distribution will be decided by the non-mobile production factors. Therefore, it is not suitable to study how transportation infrastructure affects the distribution of economic activities only from the perspective of transportation costs. Transportation infrastructure should be seemed as an independent parameter, and as a sign to characterize how the change in transportation costs, land rent, commuting costs, accessibility and network affect the distribution of economic activities due to the change of transportation infrastructure. Nevertheless, majority of the contemporary scholars are focusing on the transportation costs, rather than putting transportation infrastructure into production function as an independent variable, which result in the lack of complete theoretical analysis framework in transportation infrastructure location effect hitherto. In addition, although some studies have take the change of the non-mobile production factors'prices into consideration, such as land will affect the distribution of economic activities as a consequence of the transportation infrastructure, the remarkable attention has not been giving to the spatial dependence of industries and factors. At the same time, these two types of literature above are usually based on the assumption that the transportation costs of industrial and agricultural products are zero, or the commuting costs of labor are zero, which in essence exists ignorance in transportation costs to a certain extent, the contradiction between reality and conclusion will be deduced under such assumption, on the other hand, these all left a wide space to develop for the studyFirstly, this article tentatively brought Transportation Infrastructure as the independent variable into the production function which based on the Dixit-Stiglitz analytical framework. It developed the general equilibrium model of two regions and two departments with the feature of Neo-classical Geography and New Economic Geography, and integrated the effect that transportation infrastructures caused to the products transportation costs, factors current cost and land rental, etc, space costs into the theoretical framework of New Economic Geography Model. Additionally, the article analyzed the impact that transportation infrastructures caused to the labor factor and regional difference. Because capitals and technologies can be converted into a certain equivalent labors, therefore, the fluidity mechanism of labor force element is suitable for the flow of capitals and technologies. Secondly, the article analyzed the regional effect of transportation infrastructures and the mechanism it produced. Thirdly, it established a Capital Movement Model which contains traffic infrastructures'cumulative amount, so as to test the influencing factors, influencing direction and degree of capital movement. Meanwhile, based on the test on the spatial dependency of traffic infrastructures'cumulative amount and technology spillover and manufacturing investment intensity, the article separately established relevant Spatial Econometrics Models and using the models to analyze the influence factors and degree of technology spillover and manufacturing regional selection. Besides, the article analyzed and tested the effect that factor flow caused to manufacturing regional selection, as well as what impact factor flow and manufacturing regional selection will have on regional differences; and from this perspective the paper made evaluation on the rationality of Chinese transportation investment policies in recent years. At last, on the base of above studies, the article proposed transportation investment policies which were based on factor flow and manufacturing region. From this paper we can find that,①Transportation costs has a two-way impact on rural-urban income gap, in other words, industrial transport costs is positively correlated to rural-urban income gap while the costs is negatively correlated with it. When the rural population is larger than the urban population, the improvement of transportation infrastructure can promote the labor factor mobility and reduce the income gap between urban and rural areas, but as the labor factor in urban continue to agglomerate to a critical value, the impact of improving transport infrastructure to labor factor's mobility has no longer been significant.②During the researching period, the stock of the transportation infrastructure and technical elements have a strong consistency with manufacturing investment and location in the spatial distribution in every provincial domain in China. Stock of transportation infrastructure has a positive role in region's technology spillovers and manufacturing site, and is significantly inhibited to the region's capital outflow. So the transport infrastructure is an important factor that affects economic activities in spatial distribution.③Factor mobility can impact the local market and price index, and further impact Manufacturing Location. The impact of the region's investment, output and market size is positive to the areas with elements inflows, and negative to the ones with elements outflows, and ultimately affect the spatial distribution of the manufacturing sector.④As transportation infrastructure can promote the inflow of labor and technical factors, inhibit the outflow of capital elements and is good for the promotion of manufacturing site to a region, therefore, improving the level of transport infrastructure lagged behind within the region can enhance the endogenous development. Thus, it can inhibit the expansion of regional differentiation because of the flow of factors and manufacturing in less developed regions to developed ones in a further extent.⑤In the past period of time, there exists a serious imbalance in China's transportation infrastructure investment allocation. The transportation investment is mainly concentrated in eastern and central regions in China, while, the western region is serious deficiency which will lead to further expansion of regional disparities. Therefore, to reduce regional disparities in China to get the coordinated development between different regions, the direction of transport infrastructure investments should be tilted in the West and rural areas which have extremely low level of transport infrastructure, and invest more to the regions.
Keywords/Search Tags:Transport infrastructure, Factor mobility, Manufacturing location, Regional disparities, Transportation investment policy
PDF Full Text Request
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