Research On The Influence Of Highway Infrastructure On Rural Regional Development

The Chinese government has invested heavily in transport infrastructure in rural areas.Although investment in transport infrastructure is believed to contribute to agricultural development,there is still little empirical research on how it affects agricultural productivity.China has experienced a rapid process of urbanization and industrialization,and has made great progress in economic development.However,the rural economy is still underdeveloped,and the problems of agriculture,rural areas and farmers still need to be solved urgently.Investment in transport infrastructure has long been an important public policy in China to promote rural development.Therefore,in-depth and comprehensive analysis and evaluation of the impact of transportation infrastructure on rural regional development and its mechanism,and then efficient play to the positive effects of various transportation infrastructure,will provide practical and effective policy recommendations for the realization of a well-off society in an all-round way and the construction of a new countryside.Although a large number of literatures have studied the impact of transportation infrastructure on social and economic activities in recent years,most of these researches are focused on urban industrial sectors or some regional macro development indicators.In general,the existing literature mostly found the positive promotion effect of transportation infrastructure on economic development,regional trade and urbanization level.These researches also have some problems to be solved urgently.First,endogeneity has always been an issue that must be clarified in this aspect of research to ensure that there is no "reverse causality" between research subjects.Secondly,the channel mechanism of the influence relationship between transportation infrastructure and explained variables is clarified.The existing research is basically based on the sum effect,and it is extremely difficult to distinguish the influence degree of various economic mechanisms.Third,the existing research on "city" over "rural","industry" over "agriculture","citizen" over "farmer" problems also need to be solved.In view of this,this paper takes rural regional development as the foothold,and discusses the mechanism of highway infrastructure on rural regional development from the sample of county level.Chapter two not only summarizes and analyzes the existing studies,but also analyzes the various theories and operating results of the existing studies on the related issues of rural regional development and traffic development from both theoretical perspectives and empirical literatures.The third chapter analyzes the current situation and problems of rural regional development and transportation infrastructure development based on statistical data and existing analysis literature,and then introduces the content to be studied in this paper.Chapter four to Chapter six,according to the characteristics of rural regional development,analyzes the impact of highway infrastructure on rural labor transfer,agricultural mechanization,agricultural production efficiency and human capital accumulation.In order to better understand the role of highway infrastructure in rural regional development,the paper provides multi-level and multi-perspective theoretical basis and empirical experience,and provides some references for relevant departments to formulate and implement traffic development strategies.The content and conclusions of the empirical part are as follows:Chapter four empirically examines the impact of highway infrastructure on rural labor transfer.Using the panel data of China’s county samples and using the double difference method,we find that the opening of the expressway leads to the decline of employment in surrounding counties and townships,and promotes the off-farm transfer of labor.The quantity of rural labor force transfer is affected not only by the improvement of transportation infrastructure,but also by the heterogeneity of regions and distances to major cities.Chapter five empirically examines the impact of highway infrastructure on agricultural labor productivity.Agricultural mechanization is a key factor to improve the efficiency of China’s agricultural production,so this paper studies the impact of transportation cost reduction on the degree of agricultural mechanization.To be specific,the policy of exempting agricultural machinery tolls from toll roads in 2004 was selected as a policy shock,and the influence of the implementation of the policy on agricultural mechanization in counties with expressway was investigated by using the dual difference model.Based on the county-level panel data,after dealing with the endogeneity problem of highway route planning,this paper finds that the reduction of transportation costs will improve the level of agricultural mechanization,thus enhancing agricultural production efficiency and promoting the realization of agricultural modernization.In the further analysis of heterogeneity,we also found that the impact of this policy on the level of agricultural mechanization in plain areas was greater than that in hilly and mountainous areas.At the same time,it is found that the implementation of expressway free policy also promotes the improvement of agricultural mechanization level and agricultural labor productivity through improving Market Access.Chapter six empirically studies the influence of highway investment on the choice of rural education in China.As highway connectivity facilitates mobility,poor people in rural areas can enter a larger labor market,changing the opportunity cost of investment in education.Based on the county panel data and traffic geographic data,we find that the expressway will reduce the number of middle school students in the county,but not significantly affect the number of primary school students.In the micro channel analysis,using the population sampling survey data in 2005,we found that the opening of the highway significantly reduces the suburban counties and rural high school enrollment rate,but this does not affect the junior middle school and primary school enrollment,this is due to traffic conditions to improve the labor mobility to reduce costs,more rural school-age youth choose school work.In terms of innovation and improvement,this paper has the following contributions: innovation from the perspective of analysis.Different from the existing macro analysis of most studies on cities and secondary and tertiary industries,this paper investigates the impact of transportation infrastructure on the grassroots regional economy and sinking market from multiple specific levels based on the macro and micro channels through which highway infrastructure influences the development behavior of "agriculture,rural areas and farmers" in counties.The endogeneity was treated by a variety of methods.In order to solve the endogeneity problem,this paper uses the "difference-in-difference" method,and uses the common historical traffic routes as the instrumental variable,so as to reduce the correlation between route selection and the level of economic development in modern regions.In addition,the robustness was verified by such testing methods as eliminating core samples,conducting propensity matching,calculating market access and conducting minimum spanning tree.In order to further identify the causal relationship,the concept of market access was used to ensure the solution of endogenous problems.This paper enriches the relevant researches on county economy and "agriculture,rural areas and farmers" issues,and also contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of the impact of transportation infrastructure on rural regional development.