Study On Lagging Effects And Regional Effects Of China’s Transportration Consturction Investment

Transportation construction investment, as a major part of the national publicinvestment, is an important means of efficient resources allocation, strengthening ofnational economic lifelines, and macroeconomic regulation as well. In the context thatthe economic growth is rapid and sustained while the regional economic disparitiesremain significant, transportation construction investment is especially important forChina. Since2000, China’s central government has proposed projects such as “thelarge-scale development of the western region”,“the revitalization of the northeastindustrial area”, and “the rise of Central China” and so on. Under the guidance of theseregional economic development strategies, transportation construction investmentaccounts for a large proportion of the public investment. As an important part of theregional economic development strategy, China tries to achieve the revitalization of theregional economy through investment in transportation construction. All in all, China’sinvestment in transportation construction increasingly significantly affects the economicgrowth.The relationship between transportation construction investment and economicgrowth is not a new subject. However, researches focusing on the measurementcharacteristics of this relationship do not set forth the principle of transportationconstruction investment on economic growth in the mechanism level. Taking therelationship between transportation construction investment and economic growth as thestarting point, this paper studies the economic characteristics of China’s investment intransportation construction. The paper considers from the dimensions of time and space,and finds the tow significant characteristics, namely lagging effects and regional effects.In the field of transportation construction investment, the economic benefits of thetransportation construction investment cannot be achieved in the current period. At themicro level, the lag of economic benefits of transportation construction investmentdepends on the construction period and the length of the operation cycle. Especially,many public construction projects’ economic benefits lag until the induced trafficvolume becomes stable. At the macro level, the lag effects of transportation constructioninvestment are affected by various factors. The econometric causal analysis and correlation analysis results show that the economic benefits of transportationconstruction investment has more significant causal relationship with the transportationconstruction investment in the past periods than that in the current periods.In the context of regional economic development, a city’s economic growth isaffected not only by its own transportation construction investment, but also thetransportation construction investment of other cities within a certain range. This paperstudies the regional effects of transportation construction investment form the followingaspects, namely, regional accessibility, economic relationship and regional economicpotential, in order to progressively clarify the mechanism of the regional effects.