The Impact Of Transportation Infrastructure On County Economic Development

The 14 concentrated and contiguous destitute areas are the main battlefields for China’s poverty alleviation and the forefront of building a well-off society in an all-round way.The long-term economic development problems have severely restricted the process of poverty alleviation.Therefore,it is important to explore the ways and methods of poverty alleviation in poverty-stricken areas.significance.The state attaches great importance to poverty alleviation through transportation in order to promote the economic development of counties in contiguous and extremely poor areas.In the "Outline of Poverty Alleviation Plan for Transport Construction in Contiguous Destitute Areas(2011-2020)" organized and compiled by the Ministry of Transport,it is clearly stated that by 2020,national highways will be basically completed in contiguous destitute areas.Therefore,this paper selects the contiguous poverty-stricken areas of Gansu Province as the research object,and uses the generalized DID model to study in depth whether the opening of national highways can drive the economic development of poverty-stricken counties.First,it discusses the mechanism of expressway’s influence on economic development,and finds that expressway affects economic development through the flow of factors and regional division of labor.In addition,this paper analyzes the positive and negative effects of expressways on economic development,and finds that the opening of expressways is beneficial to reduce the transportation cost of industrial enterprises’ products,promote the development of secondary and tertiary industries,and promote the optimization of industrial structure.Increasing employment opportunities,increasing residents’ income,and improving living standards,but also brought about negative impacts such as environmental damage,reduction of cultivated area,and impact on regional economy.Secondly,based on the 14 concentrated contiguous poverty-stricken areas announced in the 2011 "China Rural Poverty Alleviation Program(2011-2020)",this article selects 52poverty-stricken areas in Gansu Province,including the Liupan Mountains,Qinba Mountains and Tibetan areas in the four provinces.County as the research object of this article.Then the panel data of 52 poverty-stricken counties in Gansu Province from 2005 to 2019 was constructed,and the broad double difference model was used to study whether the opening of national highways could promote the economic development of poverty-stricken counties in the contiguous poverty-stricken areas of Gansu Province.The study found that poor counties with national highways have better economic development than poor counties without national highways.Regarding the relationship between expressway and economic development,this paper uses the random effect probit model to conduct endogenous testing,and finds that there is no reverse causality problem.Thirdly,in order to explore the ways to realize the opening of national highways to promote economic development,this article first analyzes the heterogeneity of the tertiary industries and finds that the output value of the secondary industry in poor counties with national highways has increased faster than those without national highways.The growth rate of the output value of the secondary industry in the poor counties of highway.In order to further explore,this paper added the cross-term of the opening of national highways and the output value of the secondary industry in the model.The research results show that national highways promote the economic growth of poor counties by driving the development of the secondary industry.After analyzing the influence channels,it is found that impoverished counties connected to national expressways have an advantage in attracting corporate capital and attract more capital inflows than impoverished counties not connected to national expressways.In addition,different regions have different responses to the economic growth effect brought about by the opening of national highways.Therefore,this paper conducts a regional heterogeneity analysis and finds that the opening of highways has significantly promoted the economic development of ethnic minority areas and old red revolutionary areas.The economic promotion effect on the deep rock mountain area is limited,and the promotion effect on the economy of the remaining poor areas is not significant.Finally,this paper studies the effect of national highway construction on the economic growth of counties in contiguous poverty-stricken areas,which is helpful to enrich the theoretical and empirical research on the relationship between transportation infrastructure and economic development in contiguous poverty-stricken areas in my country.The fight against poverty is of great practical significance.