Can The Improvement Transportation Infrastructure Improve Industrial Technological Efficiency?

From the reform and opening up to 2010,China’s economy developed rapidly.The national GDP maintained a super-high double-digit growth rate for 33 years,and then the economic growth rate continued to slow down.The 19 th National Congress held in 2017 made it clear that the Chinese economy has shifted from a stage of high-speed growth to a stage of high-quality development.In this process,as the "main battlefield" of technological innovation and China’s important pillar industry,its high-quality development needs more attention.It is of great significance to the overall stable growth of China’s economy that how to promote the progress of its production technology efficiency and guarantee its highquality development through technological innovation and other means.The existing theory and practice show that the construction and improvement of transportation infrastructure is one of the prerequisite factors affecting the technical efficiency of industry.On the one hand,the construction and improvement of transportation infrastructure can shorten the time-space distance between product market and consumer market,and reduce the transaction cost between enterprises.At the same time,it can improve the market segmentation between regions,accelerate the process of market integration,improve the level of specialization division of labor between regions,and finally improve the technical efficiency of enterprises.On the other hand,the construction and improvement of transportation infrastructure reduces the inter-regional trade barriers,promotes the free flow of factors,and changes the state of regional industrial agglomeration accordingly.Enterprises may further cluster to share labor force,knowledge spillover and infrastructure,or they may choose decentralized layout based on "cost effect" and "resource transfer effect" to reduce agglomeration level.Based on this,this paper empirically tests the impact of highway network construction on industrial technical efficiency from the perspective of market accessibility at the prefecture level,and examines its mechanism from the perspective of agglomeration externality.At the same time,the paper takes China’s high-speed railway,which has developed rapidly in recent years,as an example to further test the impact and mechanism of the opening of high-speed railway on the industrial technical efficiency of prefecture-level cities.In order to achieve the above research objectives,this paper firstly constructs an index of market accessibility at the level of prefecture-level cities in China based on the existing literature and the availability of data,and measures the comprehensive effect of highway network construction.Secondly,the stochastic frontier model was used to empirically test the influence of highway construction on industrial frontier output and technical efficiency in prefecture-level cities,and the robustness test and heterogeneity analysis were carried out.Finally,the mechanism of highway network construction on the improvement of industrial technical efficiency in prefecture-level cities is explored from the perspective of industrial agglomeration externality by constructing a two-way fixed effect model.In addition,the opening of high-speed railway in prefecture-level cities greatly promoted the flow of production factors such as labor force,and had a certain impact on regional industrial technical efficiency.In order to explore the impact of high-speed rail opening on industrial technical efficiency,this paper firstly constructed a multi-period differential model to empirically test the impact of high-speed rail opening on industrial technical efficiency at the prefecture-level city level,and conducted parallel trend test,robustness test,heterogeneity test and endogeneity discussion.Then,based on the impact of the opening of high-speed rail on industrial agglomeration in prefecture-level cities,the mechanism of the effect of the opening of high-speed rail on industrial technical efficiency is further discussed.Based on the above research,firstly,the paper finds that both highway construction and high-speed railway opening reduce the flow cost of production factors among prefecture-level cities in China,thus promoting the industrial agglomeration at the prefecture-level city level on the whole and achieving the improvement of industrial technical efficiency.Secondly,from the perspective of mechanism,the improvement of highway network mainly promotes industrial technical efficiency by enhancing specialization and competition externalities,while the opening of high-speed rail has an impact on industrial technical efficiency by inhibiting diversification externalities and enhancing specialization and competition externalities.Finally,from the perspective of heterogeneity,there is no heterogeneity in the impact of highway network improvement on industrial technical efficiency,but it accelerates the pace of industrial enterprises in provincial capitals and municipalities to the surrounding areas,and reduces the output of industrial frontier.The opening of high-speed rail has further promoted the industrial and technological efficiency of non-regional central cities.