The Spatial Spillover Effect And Its Influencing Mechanism Analysis Of The Transport Infrastructure In China

The essence of this study on the relationship between transport infrastructure andmanufacturing productivity is to evaluate comprehensively the economic benefit ofthe transport infrastructure investment, and then provide relevant suggestions forgovernment making some policies on the transport infrastructure investment. As thelargest developing and transformating country around the world, the Chinesegovernment still plays an important role in developing the regional economy.Specially speaking, on the one hand, the transportation infrastructure construction haslong been one of the most important means of the central government regulating thenational and regional economy; on the other hand, the good condition of thetransportation infrastructure plays an important role in promoting the regionaleconomic growth. Especially under the condition which the regional economicdevelopment is very unbalanced and the regional income gap is becoming larger andlarger, study on the relationship between transport infrastructure and manufacturingproductivity becomes a challenging and strategic proposition.Based on the related definition and the literature review, we find that the studies onthe productivity effect of the transport infrastructure have made great progress onboth the theoretical analysis and the empirical study, but there are still two obviousshortages especially after the rise of the new economic geography. Firstly, most of theexisting related liteatures don’t consider the spatial spillover effect of the transportinfrastructure, or some literatures consider the spatial spillover effect but can’tappropriately deal with the endogeneity problem between transport infrastructure andmanufacturing productivity; Secondly, all of the existing related literatures don’tresearch the influencing mechanism which the spatial spillover of the transportinfrastructure affects the manufacturing productivity. For the first shortage, thisdissertation constructs a spatial dynamic panel data econometric model which takesinto account the auto-correlation of the manufacturing productivity, the current spatialspillover effect and the lag spatial spillover effect of the transport infrastructure in theneighboring provinces, in order to evaluate more comprehensively and accurately the spatial spillover effect of the transport infrastructure on productivity.For the second shortage, drawing on the research framework of Lakshmanan(2010)and with reference to the relevant research results about the economic growth theory,the history of transport economic development and the new economic geographytheory, this dissertation constructs a unified theoretical framework which reflects theinfluencing mechanism that the spatial spillover of the transport infrastructure affectsthe manufacturing productivity, in order to open the “internal black box” which thespatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure on the manufacturing productivity.Specially, the spatial spillover of the transport infrastructure can affect themanufacturing productivity by reducing the logistics costs of the manufacturingcompanies, improving the comparative advantage of the exports of the manufacturingproducts, accelerating the integration of the regional markets and promoting thespatial agglomeration of economic activity. According to the theoretical analysis ofthe above influencing mechanism, this dissertation further tests empirically the abovemechanism based on the Chinese provincial panel data.