Spatial Spillover Effects Of Chinese Transport Infrastructure On Regional Economic Growth

As a kind of social advance capital, transport infrastructure has always been playing a unique role incomparable in national economy. Accurately grasping the essence law of Chinese traffic infrastructure and the regional economic development, assisting government to determine the direction and the amount of investment on transport infrastructure, planning the regional development and economic policy, and achieving the coordinated sustainable development of regional economy greatly signify in practice.In theory, this paper introduces the spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure on economic growth through the significant characteristics between the network structure and the externality of transport infrastructure. Then, it finds out the mechanism of action for the transport infrastructure influencing the growth of economy that contains the microscopic, macroscopic and feedback paths. In conclusion, the spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure on economic growth are the result of the two opposite forces from agglomeration effects and diffusion effects. When all kinds of factors of production are mainly concentrated upon the rich areas, they lead the negative spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure to the poor areas. Nevertheless, when all kinds of factors of production are mainly spread to the poor areas, they lead the positive spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure to the poor areas.In empirical research that based on the perspective of regional development gap and the methods of Exploratory Spatial Data Analysis (ESDA), this paper finds out the spatial pattern and trend of transport infrastructure and economic development in China from2000to2011. Meanwhile, it proves that the spatial clustering trend and positive spatial autocorrelation on the regional economic development are significant. In addition, with the help of effective transport infrastructure variable that contains a binary adjacent spatial weight matrix, this paper introduces the spatial dimension into the traditional model, and then makes spatial spillover effects of transport infrastructure on regional economic growth model. According to31provincial data in2000,2006and2011, combined with the theory of Regional Economy and Spatial Econometrics, this paper finds out that the neoclassic economic growth factors of capital and labor still make the largest contributions to the regional economic growth. By contrast, the new economic growth factors of human capital, government expenditure, trade openness and the new economic geography of transport infrastructure play a more and more important positive role in promoting the economic development. Moreover, the direct effects of transport infrastructure on regional economic growth still account for the vast majority of the whole effects, but their importance have declined. A positive spatial spillover effect significantly exists and its impact will present stronger in the long run. Besides, without considering the spatial spillover effects will overestimate the direct effects of transport infrastructure on economic growth. Finally, according to the main conclusions, this paper puts forward some relevant policy recommendations.