Spatial Spillover Effect Of Transport Infrastructure On Manufacturing Industry In Guangdong

Transport infrastructure has been considered all along to be the basis and premise of the development of national economy, which provided significant support and guarantee for the development of economic and social undertakings. In recent years, with the development of new economic geography and spatial econometrics, the spatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure has drawn the attention of many scholars. The researches on transport infrastructure are not limited to the output effect any more. In fact, the regression analysis on production function on the basis of time series is proved to overestimate the influence of transport infrastructure on the economic development. Under this circumstance, the spatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure on the economic development has been accepted by more and more scholars. However, there are few researches on the spatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure on industries, with lacking literature on the evaluation and analysis of transport infrastructure spatial spillover effect in the development of specific areas. On this basis, this paper takes China’s manufacturing province-- Guangdong as the research object and puts forward investment policies of transport infrastructure for Guangdong government and provides suggestions for the transformation and upgrading of manufacturing industry through evaluating the spatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure on the manufacturing industry in Guangdong.First of all, this paper analyzes the network and externality of transport infrastructure theoretically and draws the conclusion that transport infrastructure has spatial spillover effect on the manufacturing industry based on the cost-dependency and the output and consumption channel of the manufacturing industry. Moreover, the positive and negative spatial spillover effect is dynamically changing in different time periods and areas. Second,this paper analyzes the spatial distribution characteristics and correlation of the manufacturing industry in Guangdong with adopting descriptive analysis and spatial exploratory data analysis. The result shows that the manufacturing industry in Guangdong is not distributed randomly, but with significant spatial agglomeration characteristics. Regions with developed manufacturing industry are gathered in the Pearl River Delta regions, while regions with developing manufacturing industry are gathered in other regions, with the significant characteristics of core-periphery structure. The Moran index I shows that the manufacturing industry of Guangdong is in positive spatial correlation. In the following part of this paper, the spatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure on the manufacturing industry of Guangdong is verified by the establishment of spatial econometric model. The conclusions are:(1) There’s spatial spillover effect of the influence of the transport infrastructure on the development of manufacturing industry, and the spatial spillover effect is positive. The spatial spillover effect values of the three time points are 0.12, 0.16, and 0.05, which means that the spatial spillover effect of the transport infrastructure is changing dynamically;(2) The total effect and direct effect of the transport infrastructure on the development of manufacturing industry show the trend of increasing and then decreasing. That is to say, the improvement of the transport infrastructure is conducive to the development of manufacturing industry, which is in the trend of decreasing;(3) Compared with 1997, the spatial spillover effect of transport infrastructure of neighboring cities is strengthen significantly in 2005. It can be inferred that, the development of transport infrastructure can better promote the growth in the local manufacturing industry and drive the development of neighboring areas at the same time. Compared with that of 2005, the spatial spillover effect of the transport infrastructure of neighboring areas in 2014 was reduced. Thus it can be inferred that, on one hand, the development of transport infrastructure may change the industrial layout, promote the flow of commodity and the further expansion of the trade market. In this way, the manufacturing industry will be less dependent to raw material producing areas and the industry distribution will be changed from integration to dispersion. On the other hand, after the development of the transport infrastructure, the flow of commodity and factors is accelerated. Due to endowment advantage and cost difference, factors of production are agglomerating to advantageous areas. In this way, while speeding the manufacturing industry of advantageous areas, the development of transport infrastructure may weaken the development of manufacturing industry in underdeveloped areas.Finally, based on the above conclusion, the following policy suggestions to improve the transport infrastructure of Guangdong and promote the sustainable development of manufacturing industry are raised: reasonable layout and planning of the transport infrastructure construction in Guangdong; further investment in the transport infrastructure of less developed areas, such as non pearl river delta areas. implementation of industry upgrade and transfer by making full use of the transport infrastructure network, and promoting the sustainable development of manufacturing industry of Guangdong.