Research On Total Factor Productivity In China's Transportation Industry Under The Constraints Of Resource And Environment

Total factor productivity(TFP)reflects the quality of a country's economic growth.Importantly,improving the TFP is an effective path to change the mode of economic growth.Enhancing the contribution of TFP in transport economic growth,it is of great significance not only for supporting the transition of China's economy from a phase of rapid growth to a stage of high-quality development,but also for providing powerful support for building China's strength in transportation.Meanwhile,Transportation,as a high energy consumption sector,is a major contributor of carbon emissions.The energy conservation and emissions reduction in transport sector is of great significance to realizing the peak of China's carbon emissions around 2030 and supporting the ecological civilization and green economic development.In the new development stage of China's transport sector,it will face the increasingly constraints of resource and environment.Therefore,it is necessary to re-examine and evaluate the TFP of China's transportation industry from the perspective of the constraints of resource and environment.Based on the above analysis,the overall goals of this paper are as follow.This study attempted to introduce the factors of resource and environment into the analysis of TFP of China's transportation industry.Specifically,this study analyzed the relationship between transport energy consumption,transport carbon emissions and transport economic growth,examined the hypothesis of environmental Kuznets curve of China's transport carbon emissions,measured the green total factor productivity(GTFP)of China's transportation industry,judged the convergence of GTFP and explored the key influencing factors of GTFP.It is helpful to accurately evaluate the cost of resource and environment in the development process of China's transportation industry,and the relevant research conclusions can provide a scientific basis for formulating related polices.the main research contents and the related conclusions are as follows:(1)The measurement and analysis of energy consumption,carbon emissions in China's transportation industry.This content utilized the “top-down” approach proposed by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC)to measure the volume of transport carbon emissions from energy consumption during the period of 2004-2016.Meanwhile,this content utilized the panel FMOLS and the panel Granger causality test based on vector error correction model(VECM)approaches analyzed the relationship between transport energy consumption,transport carbon emissions and transport economic growth.Besides,this content further utilized the extended STIRPAT model and the Sys-GMM regressions analysis methods examined the Environmental Kuznets Curve(EKC)hypothesis of transport carbon emissions.The empirical results are shown as follows.The amount of transport energy consumption and transport carbon emissions in China has increased steadily during the observation period,and the spatial distribution of carbon emissions in province-level transport sector presented the characteristics of path-dependence effect or the spatial lock-in effect to some extent.Meanwhile,the bidirectional causal relationships existed between the transport energy consumption,transport economic growth,and transport carbon emissions both in short-run and long-run.Besides,this paper found that there was not enough evidence to support the existence of the EKC hypothesis in China's transport sector.(2)The evaluation of TFP in China's transportation industry under the constraints of resource and environment.This content utilized the SBM directional distance function and sequence Malmquist-Luenberger productivity index to measure the TFP in China's Transportation Industry under the constraints of resource and environment during the period 2004-2016 based on the province-level panel data.The empirical results are shown as follows.Without considering the constraints the resource and environment,the annual growth rate of TFP of China's transportation industry was 4%,but the annual growth rate of TFP under the constraints of resource and environment was only 0.5%.In other words,if we did not incorporate the factors of resource and environmental into the evaluation framework of TFP,the contribution of TFP in transport economic growth will be significantly overestimated.However,whether considering the constraints of resource and environment,the technological progress is the main source of the growth of total factor productivity.Meanwhile,according to the decomposition of transport environmental inefficiency,the main reasons of transport environmental inefficiency relied on the extensive development characteristics of high investment,high energy consumption and high carbon emissions did not bring the corresponding high economic benefits.(3)Convergence analysis of green total factor productivity in China's Transportation Industry.Based on the relevant theories and methods of economic convergence,this content systematically examined the convergence the(accumulated)GTFP in China's transportation industry from four aspects: absolute convergence,conditional convergence,club convergence and dynamic distribution.The empirical results are shown as follows.whether it is ? convergence test,? convergence test,or the method of dynamic distribution,the corresponding results shown that the GTFP of China's transportation industry presented the convergence characteristics.However,from the perspective of long-term evolution,that is,from the perspective of accumulate GTFP,it did not show the convergence characteristics.In other words,in the long-term,the difference between province-level GTFP in China's transportation industry will not disappear unconditionally.(4)Spatial econometric analysis of influencing factors of green total factor productivity in China's Transportation Industry.This content regarded the spatial spillover effect as the breakthrough point,and on the basis of fully considering the spatial effects of transport GTFP,the spatial panel econometric models were utilized to analyze the main factors influencing the transport GTFP in China.The empirical results are shown as follows.During the whole research period,the transport GTFP of China shown a negative spatial correlation,that is,which presented siphon effect to some extent.Meanwhile,the geographical factor had significant impact on the transport GTFP,and the impact coefficient of GDP per capita on transport GTFP was significantly negative.Moreover,the adjustment and optimization of industrial structure,transport structure and energy structure,and the improvement of transportation intensity,energy intensity and labor quality could promote the improvement of transport GTFP in China.In addition,the estimated results also indicated that the effect of influencing the transport carbon emissions by adjusting the endowment structure to change the energy factor input should not be satisfactory,and the impact of environmental regulation on transport GTFP was not significant.