Transportation Infrastructure And Total Factor Productivity

Along with the rapid growth of China's economy,China's transportation infrastructure has developed rapidly in recent years.By the end of 2016,the operating mileage of high-speed railways has reached 22,000 kilometers,and the mileage of expressways has reached 131,000 kilometers,ranking first in the world.As the pioneer capital of economic development,large-scale transportation infrastructure investment has a profound impact on China's economic development,and total factor productivity as a source of long-term high-speed economic growth,its relationship with transportation infrastructure will affect the future economy development and government policy formulation,especially at present,the growth mode that relies on high resource input is unsustainable,and the development gap between regions and urban and rural areas is increasing,A comprehensive evaluation of the impact of transport infrastructure on total factor productivity is an important research issue.Through the combing of related literatures at home and abroad,it is found that the existing literature on transportation infrastructure promote the growth of total factor productivity has achieved fruitful results both theoretically and empirically,but there are two shortcomings.First,most of the literature analyzes the impact of transportation infrastructure on macro-total factor productivity,while the literature on micro-enterprises and meso-industry is relatively rare.It is even more lacking to include the three in the unified theoretical framework.Second,in the analysis of the impact of transportation infrastructure on macro-tfp,the spillover effect is not considered or the analysis of spillover effects is not comprehensive.Based on the two shortcomings of the existing literature,this paper further conducts in-depth research and draws the following conclusions:(1)Constructing an overall theoretical framework that is interrelated between the micro,meso and macro levels,and discovering the logical connection between the three levels.The industry is composed of a large number of enterprises.The improvement of enterprise TFP(total factor productivity)and the improvement of resource mismatch between enterprises can promote the improvement of industry TFP level,and the region is composed of multiple industries,and the improvement of the industry's TFP level and the improvement of resource mismatch between industries can bring about the improvement of regional TFP levels.This constitutes a logical connection from the micro-enterprise to the mid-view industry to the macro-region.(2)In the study of micro-enterprise level,the theoretical model of Keller(2002)is used to explain the theoretical mechanism of shortening the transportation distance affecting the total factor productivity of enterprises,and expounding several possible channels of influence,namely,accelerating the flow of information technology.Change the structure of enterprise input and output,reduce information asymmetry,expand the market and strengthen the specialized division of labor.In the aspect of empirical test,the distance from the company to the nearest highway in the Chinese industrial enterprise database from 1998 to 2007 was measured by GIS technology,and the total factor productivity of the enterprise obtained by semi-parametric method was combined into panel data.The impact of transportation infrastructure on the total factor productivity of enterprises,the study found that: first,the increase in the distance from the enterprise to the expressway reduces the total factor productivity of the enterprise.After adding the instrumental variables and conducting the stability test,the results are still established.Second,in the Heterogeneity analysis found that highways have more positive significance for non-state-owned enterprises,domestic-selling enterprises,enterprises in labor-intensive industries,enterprises in the central and western regions,and enterprises within 30-50 km of expressways.(3)In the study of the meso-industry level,the theory of “intensional resource mismatch” proposed by Hiseh and Klenow(2009)illustrates the theoretical mechanism of transportation infrastructure to reduce resource mismatch in the industry.Based on micro-enterprise data,we use the aggregate method to examine thevariables at the industry level.First,we use the HK method and the OP method to calculate the total factor productivity of the enterprise,and take the deviation of the total factor productivity of the enterprises as the resource mismatch.Then,by constructing a static regression model containing instrumental variables and a dynamic moment estimation model containing lag terms,the impact of improved traffic infrastructure conditions on industry resource mismatch is verified.The study found that: First,in the case of static models and dynamic models,the improvement of transportation infrastructure conditions reduces the mismatch of industry resources.Secondly,the heterogeneity is analyzed.From the perspective of the heterogeneity of different grades of highways,it is found that the high-grade highways have a greater effect on the improvement of resource mismatches,namely,highways > primary roads > secondary roads.From the perspective of industry heterogeneity,it is found that transportation infrastructure has a greater impact on industries with low factor density,namely labor-intensive industries> resource-intensive industries>capital-intensive industries> technology-intensive industries.From the perspective of regional heterogeneity,it is found that the central and western regions are more dependent on convenient and rapid land transportation.The road network has a significant effect on the improvement of resource mismatch in the central and western regions.The eastern region has diversified modes of transportation and is relatively mature,therefore,the marginal effect of highway on the effective allocation of resources is small,namely,the western region > the central region > the eastern region.(4)In the study of the macro-regional level,using Hulten's(2006)infrastructure externality theory model to explain the theoretical mechanism of the impact of improving transportation infrastructure conditions on macro-factor productivity,and discovering the direct and spillover effects of transport infrastructure on total factor productivity,the direct effect is to influence the growth of total factor productivity in the region through four aspects: technology level,technical efficiency,allocation efficiency and scale efficiency.The spillover effect affects the total factor productivity of the surrounding areas through network,space-time compression effects,andknowledge gain effects.In terms of empirical analysis,firstly,through the analysis of the spatial Dubin model under three weighting conditions,it is concluded that the spatial spillover effect oftransportation infrastructure on total factor productivity is positive and significant.Secondly,it is further analyzed whether the spatial spillover effect of transportation infrastructure follows the law of distance attenuation.It is found that the spillover effect generally shows an M-type change trend with the increase of geographical distance.The maximum value of the regression coefficient appears around 50 km.The spillover coefficient is in a small fluctuation outside 50 km,and the spillover effect disappears beyond 160 km.Thirdly,heterogeneity analysis,first of all,the comparison of the eastern,central and western regions,From the direct effect,the eastern region has found a positive and significant effect,and the central region is not significant while the western region has found evidence of significant negative.From the perspective of spillover effects,the development of the three regional transport infrastructures will have a positive and significant spillover effect.From the total effect point of view,under the condition of 0-1 weight and geographical distance weight,the transportation infrastructure in the eastern region has the greatest promotion effect on total factor productivity,followed by the central region,while the western region is not significant.Followed by the comparison of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei urban agglomeration,the Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration,and the Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration.From the perspective of direct effects,spillover effects and total effects,the transportation infrastructure has positive and significant effects on the total factor productivity of the three urban agglomerations.in which the intensity of the spillover effect is: Pearl River Delta urban agglomeration >Yangtze River Delta urban agglomeration>Beijing-Tianjin-Hebeiurban agglomeration.