高铁的间接货运效应评估:基于企业库存成本的实证分析

The Indirect Freight Effect of High-Speed Railways on Firms’Inventory:An Empirical Study

中国高铁建设的巨大成就引起了学者们的广泛关注。但是,目前还鲜有文献考察高铁通过分流作用产生的间接货运效应。与以往文献不同,本文以企业库存成本为切入点,将高铁开通视为准自然实验,深入分析了高铁建设产生的间接货运效应。具体地,本文选取2003年秦沈客运专线开通这一事件,将与之平行的沈山铁路附近企业作为实验组,省内其他地区的企业作为控制组,使用PSM-DID方法进行分析评估。基于1998—2007年辽宁省制造业企业面板数据,我们发现,相对于控制组企业,秦沈客运专线的开通使实验组企业的库存水平显著降低了10%~15%。进一步,根据企业主要运输方式的不同,我们构建了三重差分模型,结果发现,高铁对库存水平的影响随着企业对铁路运输依赖度的提高而增大,从而识别了高铁的间接货运效应。在异质性分析中,我们还发现,高铁产生的这种间接货运效应对运输成本较高的行业以及非国有企业的作用更大。本文发掘出高铁影响经济增长的一种新的微观作用渠道,即通过分流作用间接提高常规铁路的运输效率,降低企业库存成本,提升企业生产管理效率并推动经济增长。

The opening of high-speed railways(HSRs)which are dedicated to passenger transportion can increase the capacity of cargo transportation for conventional rails,which could affect firms’inventory.In this study,we examine the impact of the HSRs on firms’inventory by exploiting the opening of Qinhuangdao-Shenyang Passenger Railway in 2003 as a natural experiment.We use the firms located along Shenyang-Shanhaiguan Railway,which is parallel to Qinhuangdao-Shenyang Passenger Railway,as the experimental group,and firms in other areas within the Province as the control group.The PSM-DID method is adopted.Using a panel dataset of manufacturing firms in Liaoning Province from 1998 to 2007,we find that the above HSR has significantly reduced firms’inventory by 10%-15%.Furthermore,we perform triple difference estimation and find that the HSRs mainly decrease the inventory of firms relying more heavily on railway transportation for their inputs.We also find that the firms in the private sector as well as firms in industries with higher transportation costs experience larger decrease in inventory after the opening of the HSR.