Large-scale Transportation Infrastructure Impact Studies On Regional Economic Growth

After reviewing studies both from home and abroad on the relationship betweenthe transport infrastructure construction and economic growth,the paper analyzed thedevelopment process of the big-scale transport infrastructure using civil airports as anexample,and also discussed the status quo and problems that Chinese civil airportsface.The paper built an analytic framework,in which how the construction of civilairports affects the growth mechanism of regional economy is analyzed.First of all,the construction of civil airports has a multiplier effect,which is conditioned not onlyby marginal consumption tendency,but also by marginal tax rates,import propensityas well as use of resources in economic activities.Secondly,the construction of civilairports will affect the network performance and transportation costs,thus resulting inthe change in travel mode,network connectivity as well as accessibility,as defined byspatial location;accessibility has"real impact",which in turn will affect per capitaoutput,employment and other investments,and promotes economic growth.In this paper,input-output method is used with input-output data from AnhuiProvince of the years 1997,2000 and 2002,and after calculating and comparing howthe development of civil aviation transport affects regional economic output as well asemployment in Anhui Province,the paper concludes civil aviation transport has morea direct contribution,less spillover effect to the overall economy and its contributionis in the middle reaches of the overall contributions;it has a declining contribution toemployment,which reflects the improvement of labor productivity both within civilaviation transport industry as well as the entire regional economy.Using panel datamodel,an econometric analysis of the contribution of civil airport construction to theregional economic growth in six provinces and one city of the East China region findsthat contribution made by the construction of civil airports to regional economicgrowth is less than that of non-basic infrastructure investment,while all other basicinfrastructure investments are greater than non-basic infrastructure investment,which indicates not only that the bottleneck role played by civil infrastructure to economicgrowth has been alleviated,but also shows the distribution structure and networkstructure of civil airports in East China region is not reasonable,which to a largeextent has affected the efficiency of investments in civil airports.Meanwhile,EastChina is divided into three groups in accordance to the level of economicdevelopment in the panel data model,and the paper finds,after analysis,that civilairports from Shandong Province and Fujian province have the highest contribution toeconomic growth,and investment of the civil airport construction in these twoprovinces should therefore be increased.In the policy analysis part,the paper puts forward a series of policyrecommendations in the development model,investment decisions,financing,management and futures directions in governmental construction of basicinfrastructure,such as civil airports as discussed.