摘要
To examine the correlation between regional economic growth and inter-region transportation costs in China,this study establishes a regional economic growth model embedded with inter-region transportation costs based on the Cobb-Douglas production function.Based on a balanced growth empirical model,this study verifies the correlation by conducting a regression analysis of the panel data of 29 provinces,municipalities,and autonomous regions from 1985 to 2015.The empirical results show that:(1)The per capita GDP growth among the three regions(namely,the eastern,central,and westem regions of China)meets a conditional convergence trend,and the decreasing of the inter-region transportation costs increases the convergence speed;(2)The per capita GDP growth is in line with the club convergence trend within each of the three regions;(3)The trend of the output elasticity of the inter-region transportation costs shows that the gradual decrease of inter-region transportation costs has a positive correlation with the narrowing of economic disparity after the year 2000,accelerating“common prosperity”across different regions in China.
基金
This work is financially supported by the fund of humanistic and social science study of the Ministry of Education(study on industry specialties and logistics system in the western region of China under the viewpoint of"Silk Road Economic Belt,"15YJC790009).