| Infrastructure is the foundation for the development of various undertakings in the national economy,which can be divided into economic infrastructure and social infrastructure.China has built the world’s largest high-speed railway network and highway network,and has achieved significant achievements in various economic infrastructure construction fields such as airports and ports,water conservancy,energy,and information.In this context,estimating the capital stock of economic infrastructure and analyzing the change trend of its return on capital,further measuring the capital stock and return on capital of transport infrastructure and analyzing regional differences will help China accelerate the construction of a transportation power,promote regional coordinated development,and promote high-quality economic development.This paper calculates the capital stock of national economic infrastructure and the national and provincial transport infrastructure through the perpetual inventory method.Transforming capital stock into capital services.Combined with economic infrastructure output,capital income share,inflation index and other data,under the Jorgenson Growth accounting framework,based on the capital lease price formula,the return on capital of economic infrastructure and transport infrastructure is calculated using the macro modeling method.The main research content of this article is as follows:(1)According to the World Bank’s definition of economic infrastructure and the division of economic infrastructure industries,calculate the capital stock of economic infrastructure to avoid the problem of overestimating the capital stock of economic infrastructure in previous studies;(2)Update the data,and then calculate the national economic infrastructure capital stock data from 1953 to 2021,and the national and provincial transport infrastructure capital stock data from 1981 to 2021;(3)Using capital services instead of capital stock,we measured the return on capital of economic infrastructure in China from 2002 to 2021 and the return on capital of national and provincial transport infrastructure from 1997 to 2021.The calculation results indicate that:(1)The return rate of China’s economic infrastructure fluctuates significantly,and from 2002 to 2021,the overall return rate of China’s economic infrastructure showed a downward trend.(2)The capital stock of transport infrastructure in China has developed rapidly,but there is a significant difference in the capital stock of transport infrastructure among provinces.In terms of absolute value change,the gap between Guangdong Province with the largest change and Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region with the smallest change is about 16 times;From the perspective of proportion changes,the difference between the Tibet Autonomous Region with the largest change and Shanghai with the smallest change is about 20 times.(3)The comparison of the eastern,central and western regions shows that the capital stock of transport infrastructure in the eastern region is the highest,followed by the central region,and the capital stock of transport infrastructure in the western region is the lowest;In 2021,the capital stock of transport infrastructure in the eastern region will be about 1.4 times that of the central region and 1.55 times that of the western region;The capital stock gap of transport infrastructure in the central and western regions has gradually narrowed,and the capital stock gap of transport infrastructure in the eastern and central regions has gradually expanded.(4)The change of the return on capital of transport infrastructure across the country and all provinces and cities is complex,but it has a trend.Most provinces and cities experienced a sharp rise in the return on capital of transport infrastructure due to the financial crisis in 1998 and 2008;From 1997 to 2021,the return on capital of transport infrastructure in China and all provinces will decline as a whole.(5)Both the return on capital of economic infrastructure and the return on capital of transport infrastructure show an obvious downward trend,indicating that the investment efficiency of both in China is declining at present,and it is necessary to adjust the investment direction,reduce investment and optimize the structure. |
