A Study On The Impact Of Aviation Port On Urban Economic Growth

Today in the21st century, Air transportation has experienced a rapidexpansion in our country： Gradually Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou formed anupper airline network structure system which shape looks like a Chinesecharacter-"ding". Airport is generally believed as a high-level transpotrationhub; it is more the center of flow of human, material and information. In the eraof knowledge-based economy and under the wave of the style of sotf andintelligent production, the position potential energy of large hub airports arecontinuously improving. The large hub airports are not only acted as a trafficnode for transportation function, but more as a special strategic locationadvantage of urban economic development. Recently, By taking use of theairport location advantages, a large number of cities began to develop airporteconomy in our country. In that way, we need to figure out whether theconstruction of large-scale hub airports and the airport economic zones iseffective in promoting China’s urban economic growth, and whether this kindof growth has an effect in a long-term. The problem needs to be answered inurgent and it is clearly the basis and rationality of the economic policies.Based on the urban panel data of35metropolitan cities from1997to2011,the paper provides an empirical analysis on the long-term causal relationshipbetween airport and city economic growth. The result shows that there is aunilateral Granger causal-effect from the growth of air passenger to the urbaneconomic growth in the35major cities. There is a unilateral Grangercausal-effect from the growth of air passenger and air cargo to the urbaneconomic growth in the municipalities and sub-provincial cities. Hub airport isthe endogenous factor to city economic growth, promoting the long-termgrowth. But there is a unilateral Granger causal-effect from the urban economicgrowth to the growth of air passenger in other capital cities; the small airportsjust have short-term effect. The discrepancy of airports will make us use thenew-classic growth theory or endogenous growth theory to comprehend the meaning of urban economic growth, and will intensify the city economicdifferentiation. The development of aviation network will have importantinfluence on urban system. The long-term causality from city economic growthto air transport is not common, possibly indicates that the industrial structure ofChinese metropolitan cities don’t have strong dependence on airfreighttransport. Considering the conditions of city development, the airport city willbe the new engine of the urban economic growth in the future, if thegovernments could plan airports and layout related industries reasonably.