Abstract
Infrastructure construction results in transportation cost and regional economy changes. Based on the exogenous infrastructure change of a county highway opening as a natural experiment, this paper uses the spatial difference-in-differences (DID) model to analyze the impact of highway construction in three different provinces of China from 2004 to 2017. It was proved that highway connectivity had no significant or negative impact on the economy of the counties in three provinces that the highway passes through. In addition, highway connectivity was claimed to have obvious spatial spillover effects, which could promote the economic development of the whole region. For counties belonging to provinces in different regions and stages of economic development, we establish a spatial DID model that integrates time and space dimensions to study the impact of expressways on county economic development, to make up for the traditional DID model’s dependence on SUTVA assumptions, and to obtain spatial spillover effects.
Highlights
Recent research has analyzed the impact of transport infrastructure construction on the economy at the national, state, or interprovincial level, while its impact from a smaller intercounty perspective has rarely been analyzed. e county economy is the basic unit of the national economy and an important part of the economy in China
Both the economic development of the county and its relationship with related factors show obvious spatial correlations. e use of the spatial DID model can result in an improvement in terms of the dependence of the traditional DID model on the stable unit treatment value assumption (SUTVA) assumption and can more accurately assess the impact of highway connection on the county economy
E total effect of the expressway connectivity on the county economy in each province is positive, but the impact on the connected counties is negative or is even not significant, which is similar to the results of previous scholars’ estimations based on the DID model. e reason for this is considered to be related to the economic siphon effect formed after rapid transportation infrastructure construction. is verifies the two-stage conclusion of the impact of the decline in transportation costs in the new economic geography: the first stage widens the regional economy and income gap; in the second stage, the industry spreads to low-income regions
Summary
As an important part of infrastructure, transport infrastructure plays an important basic and leading role in economic development. Rough an analysis of the time series and cross-sectional data from 1945 to 1985 in the United States, Aschauer claimed that government investment in infrastructure has contributed to the growth of the total economic output [3]. Sanchez et al investigated the data from OECD countries and found that transport infrastructure promoted economic growth by indirectly increasing environmental consumption, but did not directly generate economic growth [8]. Ey found that the development of transport infrastructure had a positive impact on the economic growth in all regions, while transport energy consumption promoted economic growth in only a few regions. Dong and Liu concluded that the connectivity of national highways had a significant positive impact on the economy of the counties through which the national expressway passed from 2004 to 2013 [21]. The difference-in-differences (DID) model used in the above research has relatively strict application conditions, and it is evident that the characteristics of traffic infrastructure conflicted with the conditions; such research methods need to be improved
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
