A Study On Impacts Of Transport Infrastructure On Regionl Economic Growth In China

Transportation infrastructure plays an important role in the national economy, which is increasingly recognized by the citizens. Each time the state invests, transportation infrastructure is always the most important investment orientation. The relation between transportation infrastructure and economic growth has always been a hot issue, which is paid close concentration to by the specialists, scholars and policy makers. Because of the vast territory of China and the difference in resource characteristics and economic development level among different regions, an equal investment would lead to different output in different regions. So researching the relation between transportation infrastructure and economic growth has great significance for the regional development. The majority of the specialists and scholars focus on the theoretical researches at present and gain a certain research achievement, while the empirical researches are relatively less. This thesis makes a comparative research on the influence of transportation infrastructure on the eastern, central and western regions of China.First, this thesis elaborates the relation between transportation infrastructure and economic growth in theory, analyzes the way in which transportation infrastructure influences economic growth, the manner in which transportation infrastructure promotes the economic growth and restriction of the transportation infrastructure lagging behind or exceeding the development of regional economy. Second, this thesis gives a statistical description of the development tendency and the spatial distribution of transportation infrastructure and finds the problems. Eventually, the thesis establishes computation models, compares and analyzes the influence of transportation infrastructure on the regional economy based on the panel data of regions all around the country and comes to the following conclusion:(1) The output elasticity of transportation infrastructure is between 0.0328 and 0.0737, which is much lower than the output elasticity of transportation infrastructure estimated by the western economists based on the time series data and approximate with the output elasticity estimated by the western economists based on the panel data. Transportation infrastructure promotes the economic growth obviously in China. However, the output elasticity of transportation infrastructure is lower compared with non-infrastructure and non-transportation infrastructure, which means that the contribution rate of transportation infrastructure in China to the economic growth is still very low. We should accelerate the development of transportation infrastructure. (2) The output elasticity of transportation infrastructure in western region is the highest compared with the eastern and central regions. So accelerating the transportation infrastructure construction in western regions makes a great contribution to the economic growth in both western regions and other regions all around the country. (3) The output elasticity of labor force in China to the economic growth is 0.5484, which is much higher than that of the capital input of transportation infrastructure, non-infrastructure and non-transportation infrastructure. The economic growth still relies on the labor force input seriously in China.On the basis of the research achievement, we put forward corresponding proposals:First, the government should implement different policies for different regions. Second, as the imperfect transportation infrastructure seriously hinders the economic growth in the less developed western regions, the government should focus on the perfection of transportation infrastructure in these regions. Third, the government should increase the subsidy for education and cultural undertaking, especially in the western regions, in order to create a more highly skilled workforce and promote China’s soft power of competition.