A Comparative Study On The Performance Of Investment In Transportation Infrastructure Of China’s Four Economic Regions

Transportation infrastructure is the leading capital of social and economic development and plays an irreplaceable role in regional economic growth.Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up,China’s economy has developed rapidly and new growth poles have emerged,but the imbalance of regional economic development is still significant.Although the differences in regional innovation ability,accumulation of material and human capital,development policies and strategies can explain the imbalance of regional economic development to a great extent,the frontier research of regional growth theory and new economic geography theory also shows that the imbalance in transportation infrastructure investment and construction is also an important factor leading to the imbalance of regional economic development.It is unscientific to promote economic growth by expanding investment in transportation infrastructure.The central and local governments shall formulate differentiated investment strategies according to the different investment performance of regional transportation infrastructure,optimize the investment in regional transportation infrastructure and coordinate the development of regional economy.Based on the above background,under the analytical framework of new economic geography,relying on the "Chinese facts" of regional economic development and combined with the traditional theories and cutting-edge progress of regional economic development and economic geography,this paper makes a comparative study on the investment performance of transportation infrastructure in China’s four major economic regions:first,define the relevant concepts and research scope,And sort out the demonstration of relevant basic theories on the status and role of transportation infrastructure investment,as well as the empirical research on the status and role of transportation infrastructure investment;Secondly,it analyzes the current situation of China’s regional economic development and transportation infrastructure investment and construction;Finally,using Romer(1986)[3]model for reference,this paper constructs a production function containing a variety of public inputs and externalities,estimates the input-output elasticity of transportation infrastructure at the national and regional levels respectively by using the mixed regression model,measures the investment performance of transportation infrastructure in the region by using the Investment-Output elasticity of transportation infrastructure,and then makes a comparative study on the interregional differences and phased characteristics of investment performance of transportation infrastructure.The research shows that:first,the investment in transportation infrastructure in the region can significantly promote the local economic growth;Second,the investment performance of transportation infrastructure in China’s four major economic regions shows obvious interregional and phased differences.Among them,from the spatial dimension,the investment performance of transportation infrastructure in the four economic regions decreases gradually in the order of central,northeast,Western and eastern regions.The eastern region has entered the innovation driven stage,and the growth driving role of local transportation infrastructure is in a secondary position.Although the development of the central,northeast and western regions has the phased characteristics of "infrastructure driven",the western region shows an obvious gap in terms of the effect of transportation infrastructure driving regional growth;From the perspective of time dimension,the investment performance of transportation infrastructure in the eastern region has experienced a process of diminishing returns to scale from 2001 to 2019,while the central and northeast regions have experienced a process of increasing returns to scale.The western region is relatively special,the return on transportation infrastructure investment has little change in the research period,and the output elasticity has hovered at a low level for a long time.In order to optimize the local transportation infrastructure investment,this paper suggests that for the central region where the transportation infrastructure investment is still in the stage of increasing returns to scale and the investment performance is the highest,it is still necessary to adopt the strategy of "transportation infrastructure investment first";For the northeast region where the investment performance of transportation infrastructure is at the second high level,we should adopt the practice of "combining appropriate incremental investment with stock optimization";For the eastern region where the investment performance of transportation infrastructure has obviously shown the stage of diminishing returns to scale,the approach of "focusing on stock optimization and appropriate incremental supplement" should be adopted;For the western region,which is sparsely populated and has relatively low road network density and road utilization rate,the investment and construction of transportation infrastructure should "focus on the construction of key locations and guide the appropriate concentration of population and industry to key locations".