The Empirical Research On Total Factor Productivity Of Chinese Railway Industry

As the artery of national economy, railway transportation has a profound impact on our country’s economic and social development. In the recent decade, the huge investment put into the railway transportation made the rail network, especially the high speed railway, achieve a stride development. However, the growth speed of rail transportation income is relatively slow. The surplus capacity on high speed railway and relatively insufficient capacity on common railway exist at the same time. How to measure the change of Chinese railway transportation productivity with modern statistics theory, analysis the influencing factors of the change and find out the ways which can effectively improve the productivity is our main problem.This article is based on the perspective of Total Factor Productivity (TFP) and related research of railway transportation industry. Several calculation method of TFP are used such as Solow Residual Method, DEA-Malmquist Index Method to calculate the TFP of railway transportation from the aspects of railway’s time series data and the horizontal comparison with other modes of transport and other countries. The Solow Residual Method shows that there is a downtrend of TFP since2008and capital investment’s growth rate is much higher than that of transportation revenue. The Malmquist Index Method between transportation modes shows that railway transportation has a lower TFP growth rate than the average level of the whole transport industry and the decrease on the efficiency of resource allocation is the main reason. And the Malmquist Index Method between countries shows that there is a downtrend of TFP in Chinese Railway, however, Russia, Germany and India has a uptrend,and USA and Japan stay the same. At last, several policy recommendations are put forward such as accelerating the reform of railway system, optimizing investment’s structure and scale, opening the railway market, and improving the management mechanism.