“一带一路”建设、中西部开放与地区经济发展

Belt and Road Initiative,Central and Western Regions Opening and Economic Development

随着“一带一路”建设的推进,中西部地区逐渐走向开放的前沿。本文首先采用简约式估计方法,利用双重和三重差分法证实在“一带一路”倡议提出后,中西部关口在中国对外贸易中的作用逐渐增强,尤其体现在与“一带一路”沿线国家的贸易上。其次,进一步采用结构式估计方法,构建允许国内外贸易和劳动者迁移的空间经济模型,并在地级市层面估计模型参数。校准后的模型能够较好地拟合中国各地对外贸易的情况。在此基础上的反事实研究表明,由于相对降低中西部地区的外贸成本,“一带一路”建设大幅促进了中西部开放,进而使中国总出口、实际GDP以及社会福利分别增加了3.397%、0.397%以及0.142%,并且中西部地区的收入改善更加明显,东、中、西部地区之间收入差距缩小。

With the progress of the“Belt and Road”construction,China's central and western regions are gradually beginning to play a vital role in the opening up.This paper first adopts a reduced-form estimation,using DID and triple differences models to demonstrate that following the introduction of the“Belt and Road”initiative,the importance of China's central and western ports with respect to foreign trade has gradually increased,especially in trade with countries along the“Belt and Road”.It then employs the structural estimation method to further discuss this impact.Specifically,the paper builds a spatial economic model that allows for domestic and foreign trade and labour migration,and then calibrates the model using city-level data.The calibrated model can adapt to trade data well.A counterfactual analysis on this basis indicates that due to the relatively lower foreign trade costs in the central and western regions,the“Belt and Road”construction has been significantly promoting the opening up of these regions,which in turn has been increasing the total exports,real GDP and social welfare of China by 3.397%,0.397%and 0.142%respectively.The positive impact has also been more pronounced in the central and western regions,and therefore inequality among regions has been declining.