Empirical Analysis Of Economic Impact Of Highway On The Development Of Guangdong Province

Since the first highway-Foshan Highway opened to traffic in 1989,the development of the highway in Guangdong province comes into a phase of rapid development with the mileage of highway increasing year by year.In 12 th Five-Year,the highway construction of Guangdong province entered the golden age,during which period a total of 3166 billion Yuan was invested in the highway construction project,leading to an increase of 2179 kilometers in the mileage.To the end of 2015,the total mileage of highway of Guangdong province had exceeded 7000 kilometers,ranking first in the country,with a total of 67 counties open to traffic,making Guangdong province the ninth province to achieve this goal.Highway construction is a huge investment,and how will the huge investment affect the economic development of Guangdong province? What are the influencing mechanisms and effects? The research of the above problems has important theoretical and practical significance.On the basis of the relevant theories,this paper makes an in-depth analysis of the influence mechanism of highway on the regional economic development,including direct and indirect impacts.The direct impacts refer to the impacts of the highway on the development of the transportation industry,including reducing the transportation cost of the road users and promoting the development of integrated transport systems.The indirect impacts are derived from the direct impacts,including accelerating the growth of regional economy,strengthening interregional interaction and promoting the formation of industrial belts.In the empirical part,based on the panel data of 20 cities from 2005 to 2015,this paper uses the ols model,randomized effect model and fixed effect model to examine the economic influence of highway construction on the development of overall economy,the secondary and tertiary industry in Guangdong province.The empirical results show that:(1)highway construction has a strong positive effect on the economic development of Guangdong Province with an elasticity is 0.138.If the mileage of highway increases by 1%,the GDP of Guangdong province will increase by 0.138% respectively;(2)The construction of highway can significantly increase the labor productivity and the ratio of profits to cost of industrial enterprises.A one percent growth of highway mileage will lead to a 0.149% growth of labor productivity and a 1.7% growth of the ratio of profits to cost of industrial enterprises;(3)Highway construction has little effect on the development of tertiary industry,but highway do promote the development of tourism industry.