A Research On Chinese Railway Development Efficiency Measurement And Its Economic Impact

Railway plays an important role in promoting Chinese national economic development.As a kind of social public products,railway has the characteristics of geographical network and economic externality.Under the background of promoting the coordinated development of all regions in China,well-developed railway construction contributes to agglomeration and diffusion of production factors and connecting all regions as a whole.However,over-development may lead to low efficiency and waste of railway transportation industry.On the other hand,it may also make crowding-out effect on the development of other national economic sectors.With unbalanced economic development in different regions,railway development will facilitate production factors gather to the developed regions,which will probably have spatial negative spillover effect on the economic growth of some regions.Therefore,it is of theory and practical significance to research on improving railway efficiency and railway development's impact on economy.From both internal and external perspectives of railway industry,this study conducts a research on its own Total Factor Productivity(TFP)and the external influence on economic growth.The study mainly includes the following five parts.The first part,Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 of the thesis,systematically introduces research background,objective and significance and overall idea and framework of the paper and analyzes current shortcomings in the research.After reviewing related research on Total Factor Productivity(TFP)of railway industry and its impact on economic growth,it is found that there are still deficiencies in research perspective,content and methods.The second part,Chapter 3 of the thesis,takes use of historical analysis to systematically summarize the China's railway development process of more than one hundred years and analyzes development features and status based on development history.Meanwhile,using comparative analysis to externally compare the development history and reform process of the developed countries,such as the US,Japan,German and UK,this paper reaches two evolution trends(national policy and organization model)and three reform drivers(huge debts,fierce competition and social reform).In addition,compared the development status of railway transportation with others,this research sums up merits and demerits and applicable scope of different transportation methods.With historical and comparative analysis,these conclusions provide a reference for the research on railway development and reform direction.This study is more meaningful since the reform of China's railway department has just opened.Based on Total Factor Productivity(TFP),the third part,Chapter 4 of the thesis,explores technical efficiency and its influence factor of Chinese railways.First,the study estimates the development trend of Chinese railway transportation since reform and opening-up by applying Solow model.Second,TFP of different regions in China is calculated by comparing railway transportation TFP of eastern,central,western and northeast China by means of DEA-Malmquist Model.Finally,combined with practical situation,this study analyzes specific TFP influence factor and current operation performance is fitted with regression model.Empirical findings indicate that in the respect of railway technical efficiency,TFP of Chinese railway presents fluctuating upward trend from 1980 to 2014,which is roughly the same with technical progress.In terms of single input factor,contribution rate of capital is slightly greater than that of labor.The major factors affecting TFP of Chinese railway transportation are passenger transport density,labor productivity,road network density,population density and average daily output of freight locomotive.Except for population density,other factors had positive impact on the TFP of railway.This part analyzes different determinants of TFP of different regions in Chinese railway development.The relationship between Chinese railway development and economic growth is empirically studied in the fourth part,Chapter 5 of this thesis.This study makes an analysis of dynamic relationship between railway transportation and GDP by choosing Rail Passenger Kilometers(RPK)and Rail Freight Tonne-Kilometers(RFTK),two key railway transport indicators closely related to railway development,and by using impulse response function and variance decomposition.Then by applying Feder's two-sector model and assuming that national economy only contains two sectors,railway and non-railway,this thesis deduces effect function of railway development on economic growth and non-railway sector development.Besides,building spatial econometric models and taking indicator data of 31 provinces and cities from 1986 to 2014 as samples,this thesis analyzes the influence of railway development on economic growth and non-railway sector development.Empirical findings indicate that GDP and RFTK are interdependent and coexistent while RPK have unidirectional influence on GDP.GDP variance decomposition results show that GDP itself has greatest contribution to its change;RFTK comes second and RPK comes last which presents a changing trend of “U”.In addition,railway industry development vigorously promotes both economic growth and non-railway sector development.From the view of time,although at present,the effect degree is still low,the railway impact is growing and relative difference amplitude of marginal productivity between railway and non-railway sector turns from the negative side to the positive side.This part provides the research foundation to analysis of railway department and other departments' impact on economy and also offers a reference for further exploration of railway industry's effect on economic growth.The corresponding policy recommendations are presented in the fifth part,Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of the thesis,mainly including structural reform,operation structure adjustment,technical level improvement,financing methods and investment scale and direction.Meanwhile,this study's conclusions,innovative points,drawbacks and future directions of further study are also summarized in this part.