Research On Industrial Total Factor Productivity Of Countries Along The Belt And Road

Since the 2008 global financial crisis,China’s economy has gradually shifted from high-speed growth to high-quality development.In 2013,China proposed to jointly build the "Belt and Road" to cope with the drastic changes in its internal and external environment.Over the past decade,trade with countries along the Belt and Road has been deepening.Through the construction of "One Belt and One Road",China gradually strengthens the industrial cooperation and development with countries along the Belt and Road.Specifically,in the industrial field,China is currently in the middle stage of the late industrialization,with great deficiencies in technological innovation,and faces a series of difficulties such as industrial transformation and upgrading.Most countries along the Belt and Road have a lower degree of industrialization than China.It provides conditions for China’s superior production capacity to "go global" to optimize its own industrial structure.In terms of technical cooperation,countries along the Belt and Road can carry out technical exchanges through the construction of the Belt and Road to promote technological progress of various parties.This paper focuses on the study of industrial total factor productivity of countries along the Belt and Road,aiming to provide reference for the improvement of industrial total factor productivity of countries along the Belt and Road,and also provide inspiration for the industrial transformation and upgrading of China’s industry.In this paper,the transnational panel data of countries along the Belt and Road from 2010 to 2019 were selected from the World Bank database,PWT database and HDI database by using literature analysis,economometric analysis and comparative analysis,and the countries along the Belt and Road were divided into seven regions according to their geographical locations.Firstly,the industrial development status of countries along the Belt and Road is analyzed one by one from the five perspectives of energy factor endowment,industrial labor force,capital stock,industrial economy size and industrialization degree,and a comparative analysis is made between regions.Then,the DEA-Malmquist index model is established to estimate the industrial total factor productivity and its decomposition items of the countries along the route,and the analysis is carried out from the overall level and regional level.Finally,the fixed effect model is established to explore the influencing factors and the transmission mechanism of industrial total factor productivity,and the group analysis is conducted according to the level of industrialization.The main conclusions of the study are as follows:First,countries in West Asia and the Middle East have the most abundant energy factor endowment;countries in East Asia both have the leading industrial capital stock and industrial economic size and have a large number of industrial workers with the longest average working hours;and the labor force in Central and Eastern Europe has the highest level of education and the highest degree of industrialization.Countries along the Belt and Road cover all stages of industrialization,and about 68 percent of them are less industrialized than China.Second,after the Belt and Road construction got on the right track in 2014,the industrial total factor productivity of the countries along the Belt and Road showed a trend of slow fluctuation and rise,and the active driving force of its improvement was the role of technical efficiency.Third,R&D input has a significant positive impact on industrial total factor productivity by promoting technological progress,and economic development level has a significant positive impact on industrial total factor productivity by promoting technological efficiency and technological progress.This positive effect is greater in less industrialized countries than in more industrialized countries.Among other influencing factors,foreign trade has a significant positive promoting effect on industrial total factor productivity,while government behavior has a significant negative promoting effect on industrial total factor productivity.This study has some innovations.In the past,few scholars were able to study "One Belt and One Road" from the perspective of total factor productivity.This paper focuses on the perspective of industrial total factor productivity,which has certain innovation in research perspective.In terms of the research content,this paper trys to calculate the industrial total factor productivity of countries along the route,and creatively makes grouping regression according to the degree of industrialization when exploring its influencing factors,so as to study whether the influence of explanatory variables is heterogeneous.Therefore,there is some innovation in the research content.