要素市场扭曲、交通基础设施改善与企业出口

Transportation Infrastructure,Distortion of Factor Market and Export Behavior of China's Industry Firms

文章基于Melitz (2003)企业异质性理论构建厂商出口决策模型,利用2005-2007年工业企业数据库,从要素市场扭曲角度分析交通设施影响企业出口的微观机制。研究发现,交通基础设施对企业出口倾向和出口数量具有显著的促进作用,在进入国内市场固定成本大于进入国际市场成本时,地区要素市场扭曲程度越高,交通基础设施的促进作用越明显。聚焦不同所有制的企业可以进一步发现,要素市场扭曲对非国有部门企业的抑制作用更突出,改善交通基础设施通过优化资源配置更有助于带动非国有企业的出口。研究结果还显示,交通基础设施和要素市场扭曲对企业出口的影响存在地区差异,交通基础设施和要素市场扭曲对中西部地区企业出口数量的促进作用比东部地区企业更大。这一结论不受内生性的影响。

Transport infrastructure contributes to improve the efficiency of resource allocation, ease factor market distortions,and promote enterprises exports. Transport infrastructure can not only ease financing constraints to encourage enterprises exports,but also play a key role in export promotion through labor allocation improvement. In general,in areas where transportation infrastructure is more developed,search costs of businesses and workers tend to be lower, which will improve the efficiency of matching between labor and enterprises. Traffic conditions directly affect the level of labor mobility and skill matching. Therefore,it is deserve to pay more attention to examine whether the transportation infrastructure affects the export of enterprises through the channel of mitigating the distortion of the factor market.This paper studies the impact of transportation infrastructure on the export of enterprises by improving the efficiency of factor allocation,rather than from the perspective of transportation costs or inventory costs. The research in this paper is highly complementary to previous studies. These two types of research jointly analyze the effects of transportation infrastructure on enterprise exports from both product market and factor market.The study sets up an export model based on the new-new trade theory. By using the panel data from nationwide manufacturing enterprises, we estimates export behavior of China’s Industry firms, and examines the synergistic mechanism by which transportation infrastructure and the distortion of factor market influence export. The econometric results show that transportation infrastructure promotes export in general, and the higher the degree of factor market distortion is, the more obvious the promotion of transport infrastructure is. Focusing on different ownership of the enterprise, we find that factor market distortions are more pronounced for non-state sector enterprises. Therefore, improving the transport infrastructure will help drive the export of non-state enterprises by optimizing the allocation of resources. Moreover, there exist regional differences in the impact of transport infrastructure and factor market distortions on exports. Traffic infrastructure and factor market distortions have a greater impact on the export volume of enterprises in central and western regions than in eastern region. This conclusion is drawn without interference from endogeneity.Our conclusions here are of significant policy implications. Firstly, the misallocation of factor resources is one of the major obstacles in enterprise export s, and improving traffic conditions tend to promote the efficiency of resource allocation and enterprise exports. Secondly, under the dual constraints of transportation infrastructure and factor market distortions, those more viable and competitive private enterprises may lose the opportunities of foreign trade. Therefore, it is of great importance to actively promote the marketization process of the factor market, advance the construction of transportation infrastructure,and enhance the export competitiveness of enterprises, thereby optimizing China ’s economic structure. Finally, policy makers need to pay attention to the planning and construction of transportation infrastructure in central and western regions, but also improve the employment environments, and guide the rational flow of enterprises and labor to the central and western regions,thereby narrowing the regional gap.