Research On The Effect Of Improved Transportation Infrastructure On Manufacturing Agglomeration

At present,China's economic growth is slowing down,the quality of economic growth needs to be improved,the real economy,especially the manufacturing industry,is large but not strong,there are many problems,such as lack of high-end talents,inadequate R&D capacity and lack of self-brand.The transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry has entered a critical test period.From the experience of developed countries and China's development practice,in order to maintain the vitality of economic growth,we must not be divorced from the real economy,and we must do more compulsory manufacturing.At the same time,the Nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China proposed the strategic deployment of "transportation power" to provide an important precondition for mandatory manufacturing.How to improve the transport infrastructure and further guide industrial clusters is a problem worthy of in-depth study.This paper intends to take this as an entry point to clarify the spatial non-linear effect of transportation infrastructure on manufacturing agglomeration.The panel data of 285 prefecture-level cities in China from 2003 to 2016 were collected and sorted out.Highway density was chosen as the proxy variable of transport infrastructure(the railway mileage data at prefecture-level city level is difficult to collect).The frontier econometric analysis method was applied to empirically test the spatial non-linear economic impact of China's transport infrastructure on manufacturing agglomeration.In theory,convenient transportation can not only reduce transport costs,but also accelerate the flow of elements,products and services between regions,which is conducive to stimulating economic growth.In addition,because of its inherent network,transportation infrastructure not only acts on local economic activities,but also has an impact on the economic activities of surrounding areas.It is worth noting that convenient transportation conditions may also transfer the resource endowment of underdeveloped areas to developed areas,which does not exclude the risk of negative spatial spillover of manufacturing agglomeration.In the empirical analysis part,this paper uses the spatial panel model and threshold panel model to test the spatial spillover effect and the non-linear threshold effect of transportation capacity on manufacturing agglomeration.Based on the above diagnostic results,the following conclusions are drawn:Firstly,during the sample period,the spatial distribution of manufacturing agglomeration in China shows significant positive autocorrelation.It shows that the manufacturing industry in China has shown obvious spatial cluster form at the level of prefecture-level cities.From the perspective of time dimension,with the passage of time,the autocorrelation fluctuation of manufacturing agglomeration in China has increased,which indicates that the relationship between manufacturing agglomeration in adjacent prefecture-level cities has become closer and closer.Secondly,as far as the whole country is concerned,the investment in transportation infrastructure in this region has effectively raised the level of local manufacturing agglomeration.It shows that convenient traffic conditions can help to promote the agglomeration of manufacturing industry,guide industrial clusters and stimulate high-quality economic growth.However,the improvement of transportation infrastructure in adjacent areas will not promote the agglomeration of manufacturing industry in the region,and there is a weak negative spatial spillover.Thirdly,from a regional perspective,the upgrading of transportation capacity in the three major economic regions in the east,central and western regions has strongly promoted the agglomeration of manufacturing industry,but there are some differences in different regions.Among them,the spatial lag variable of traffic infrastructure in the eastern region is significantly negative,which indicates that under the background of industrial transfer,the improvement of traffic conditions accelerates the shift of manufacturing enterprises in the eastern region to the central and western regions.Fourthly,there is a typical "inverted U" relationship between China's transport infrastructure improvement and manufacturing agglomeration.The test results show that the critical point of road density hindering the agglomeration of manufacturing industry is 1.932.When the urban traffic conditions are developed to a certain extent,the congestion effect caused by excessive agglomeration of local manufacturing enterprises begins to appear.At this time,the advantages of appropriate decentralization of manufacturing enterprises outweigh the disadvantages.