Study On The Impact And Mechanism On Regional Total Factor Productivity Of Aviation Infrastructure

Transport infrastructure is an essential foundation for economic development. With the rapid development of economic globalization as well as the growth of Chinese economy, an unprecedented opportunity for the air transport industry has coming. The importance of aviation infrastructure on the regional economic growth continues to raise. Previous research on the transport infrastructure always tend to ignore the aviation infrastructure, therefore whether the aviation infrastructure promotes the development of regional economy and whether it is good for the sustainable long-term economic growth need to be studied.The study analyzes the mechanism of aviation infrastructure impact on regional total factor productivity in theory, and the theoretical analysis shows that the aviation infrastructure has some characteristics including accessibility, network, quasi public goods and externality. The aviation infrastructure promotes the growth of total factor productivity by increasing the accessibility, perfecting network and playing the role of external influence.Based on the panel data of 30 provinces from 2000 to 2012, the paper builds two empirical models to quantitatively analyze the influence of aviation infrastructure on total factor productivity. From a national perspective, the aviation infrastructure has not only a significant promoting effect on regional total factor productivity growth but also a spatial spillover effect. The aviation infrastructure improvement can not only promote the total factor productivity growth of local region, can also promote total factor productivity growth of near areas around the aviation infrastructure. From the regional perspective, the effects of aviation infrastructure vary in different regions, especially the difference of spatial spillover effect is more significant.At last, based on the above conclusions, in order to further the positive role of the aviation infrastructure in the growth of total factor productivity, the paper puts forward some policy recommendations.