Research On The Impact Of Transportation Infrastructure On Regional Economic Growth From The Perspective Of Civil Aviation Airports

The State Council of People's Republic of China has formerly launched “Guideline for Building National Strength in Transportation” in September,2019.It has been emphasized that building national strength in transportation is the initial field of building the modern economic system and the important foundation of building up a socialism modern powerful nation.Since the reform and opening up to the outside world,Chinese government has enhanced the construction of transportation infrastructure substantially,which can improve the inter-regional reachability,facilitate the two-way flow of the economic factors,increase the efficiency of resource distribution and promote the economic growth.There is a common view that transportation infrastructure construction usually plays a positive role in economic growth,which has been confirmed in domestic and foreign literature for many times.However,transportation infrastructure is taken as a whole for research in the most current literature.The specific type of the transportation infrastructure is rarely mentioned.Currently,railway(high-speed railway included)as the only kind of transportation infrastructure is mentioned in some literature,meanwhile the other type of the transportation infrastructure is rarely mentioned..Therefore,civil airport is taken as a research object to study its effect on regional economic growth in this paper.It mainly takes into account that the passenger number and freight turnover of civil airport rank first among the main modes of transportation(roads,railways,civil aviation,waterways)in recent years.It grows particularly rapidly and plays a very important role in regional economic growth.Moreover,after the "Civil Aviation Localization Reform",rigid administrative operation and management mechanism of the civil airport has been broken.Through this reform,civil airport can better promote the regional economic growth after its construction completion.In this regard,civil airport is taken as a research object to carry out the multidimension theoretical and empirical analysis when the traditional proposition of "The Impact of Transportation Infrastructure on Regional Economic Growth" is studied.It is involved in the research on the overall impact on regional economic growth as well as the possible spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics.In addition,the empirical research is further carried out to testify the possible impact paths on regional economic growth(including industrial linkage path,industrial agglomeration path,industrial structure upgrading path and employment path)so as to make some political recommendations for how to maximize the economic effect of the Chinese transportation infrastructure including the civil airport.In the aspect of empirical analysis,due to the regional strategy and policy orientation of building civil airport,the multi-period difference-in-differences model based on propensity score matching as well as the national city-level panel data is adopted.The thirty-two new cities related to the thirty-two new civil airports established nationwide from 2004 to 2014 are taken as experimental treatment group samples.Initially,the first quasi-natural experiment is carried out by taking "establishment" of the local civil airport as political shocks.It is aimed to study the overall impact,the spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics of the civil airport on regional economic growth in the process of construction of civil airports.When studying the temporal dynamics of the civil airport,we further divide it into the Duration import on regional economic growth during the construction and the After impact on regional economic growth after the completion of construction.Due to the After impact which should be paid more attention,the second quasi-natural experiment is carried out by taking "openness" of the local civil airport as political shocks.It aims to further testify the corresponding impact path of the impact on regional economic growth after the completion of construction.The empirical results of this paper show that the civil airport construction plays a significant role in regional economic growth on the whole.From the perspective of spatial heterogeneity,it is found that the positive effect of the civil airport construction on economic growth is more significant in Eastern China and Central China than in Western China,which reflects that the role in regional economic growth in Western China is limited.From the perspective of time dynamics,it is found that the Duration impact of civil airport on regional economic growth is obvious during the construction period.However,the impact of civil airport on regional economic growth is not obvious at the early stage after the completion of construction and openness.It can play a more and more obvious role in regional economic growth only after some time.It is showed that the impact of civil airport on regional economic growth is hysteretic to a certain extent after the completion of construction and openness.In other word,it can play an After role in regional economic growth only after some time.In addition,it is showed by the empirical test results of the impact of civil airport on regional economic growth that civil airport can promote regional economic growth afterly by developing the local industry related to civil aviation transportation(tourism industry and logistics industry)on the basis of the industry connecting effect.In addition,it is possible to promote the agglomeration of the industry with high added value,great dependence on civil aviation and sensitivity to transportation time so as to promote regional economy growth afterly.In addition,it is possible to promote regional economic growth afterly through the growth of the employment of the specific industries related to the industry connecting effect and industrial agglomeration path.Last,the conclusion of this article has been compared with other literature which has also studying the economic impact of the construction of transportation infrastructure.It is inferred that the hysteretic feature of the impact of the civil airport on regional economic growth after the completion of construction and the effectiveness of corresponding impact path can be extended to the general transport infrastructure.Therefore,the conclusion of this paper can provide some reference for policymakers in the process of planning civil airport and formulating the development policies about other transformation infrastructure in the future.It can also make some political recommendations for how to maximize the economic effect of the Chinese transportation infrastructure including the civil airport.