The Impact Of Transport Infrastructure On Regional Economic Growth

Transportation infrastructure is the leading capital of social and economic development and plays an irreplaceable role in economic development.Further study of the impact and mechanism of transport infrastructure on regional economic growth in China can provide a theoretical reference for the government to formulate regional development policies,which is conducive to the coordinated and sustainable development of regional economy.On the basis of the existing research results systematically and related theory,it discusses the transport infrastructure on the economic growth mechanisms,using Cobb—Douglas production function,Durbin model,Iceberg cost analysis on the transport infrastructure's influence on regional economic growth,and put forward corresponding countermeasures and suggestions.The transportation infrastructure has the characteristics of network and externality,which may lead to spatial spillover effects of the infrastructure.Such spatial spillover effects,consisting of positive spillover effect and negative spillover effect,exert a great influence in the neighborhood of transportation infrastructure through the overlapping combination of agglomeration effect and diffusion effect.Specifically,negative spillover effect may cause various productive factors to flow to the developed economic area while positive spillover effect may prompt productive factors to spread to the less developed areas.Based on an empirical study of the 2000-2014 data on transport infrastructure in China,it is proved through Cobb-Douglas Model that transportation infrastructure can promote economic growth.Then By introducing spatial weight matrix to confirm the spatial correlation of adjacent regions in our country and integrating the spatial dimension into regional economic model,the author establishes the spatial spillover model that transportation infrastructure can boost the regional economic growth while taking into full account transportation costs(highway and railway mileages),urbanization rate,human capital,industry clustering,and export quotas variable factors.The empirical evidence shows that the transportation infrastructure has a significantspatial spillover effect on the regional economy.On the basis of the above analysis,the author introduces the “Iceberg Cost Model”and integrates the boundary effect into the survey.The fluctuation of provincial relative price reflects the degree of regional economic integration,By analyzing the trade openness,government expenditure scale and urbanization rate,it can be confirmed that transportation infrastructure has a significant effect on the regional economic integrationBased on the analysis above we may come to the following conclusions.Firstly,transportation infrastructure contributes to the regional economic growth.Secondly,it can be verified that transportation infrastructure plays a remarkable spatial spillover effect on the regional economy by the introduction of Spatial Dubin Model(SDM).If we ignore the spatial spillover effect,we will overestimate the role of transportation infrastructure in the economic growth.After introducing the spatial spillover effect,we find the transportation infrastructure somewhere else may produce a prominent spillover effect on the local economy,leading to the appearance of “Polarization Phenomenon” that the disparity of economic development will be aggravated and the imbalance of regional economies will also be enlarged.Thirdly,considering the boundary effect,we discover that transportation infrastructure can cause the significant fluctuation of relative commodity prices.Meanwhile,convenient transportation infrastructure can partially offset the adverse effects brought by regional trade barriers but it influences the unified price mechanism and further development of regional integration.Finally,the author proposes several relevant suggestions Based on the above analysis.First and foremost,China's transportation infrastructure can facilitate economic development as a whole but its effects vary from eastern regions to middle and western regions.Therefore,different regional policies should be taken according to different statuses of regional economic development.Second,the spatial spillover effect of transportation infrastructure may result in the existence of negative externalities.Consequently,the former regional policies along the route should be adjusted and the appropriate policy support ought to be given to minimize the impact of negative externalities along the route and try to promote coordinated development of regionaleconomies.Third,the boundary effect can partially offset the spatial spillover effect of positive externalities of transportation infrastructure.Thus,regional governments should take the favorable impact of overall economic growth into consideration and try to accelerate the integration of regional economies.