城市社区基础设施投资的创业带动作用

The Unintended Consequences of Urban Community Infrastructure Investment on Entrepreneurship in China

在经济增长动力转换的关键阶段,近年来出现了能否以投资作为主要增长动力的方向性争议,研究基础设施投资在经济结构升级中的创造性作用非常重要。基于微观住户调查数据,本文研究了城市社区基础设施的创业带动作用,探讨了基础设施促进居民创业的原因和作用机制,分析了涉及重大宏观投资问题的微观基础,指出了未来基础设施的主攻方向和投资重点。本文发现,无论是按工程类还是按服务性质划分,社区基础设施都具有很大的正向外部性,使得居民创业比例显著提升,并且城市中心地区、交通环保类基础设施的创业带动作用更加明显。良好的城市社区基础设施便利了居民生产生活,促进了信息、资源和要素的流通效率,改善了居民主观预期,带来更多的创业机会和更低的创业门槛,从而社区基础设施显著提高了居民创业概率。在经济向高质量转型背景下,仍然要肯定"稳投资"在经济增长中的重要作用,尤其重视社区基础设施投资在结构转型中所扮演的关键角色,选择城市中心地区、资本密集型行业、交通环保类基础设施为投资重点,注重对高技能居民的创业政策引导,以提升基础设施带来的创业回报,并实现经济从投资拉动向创新驱动转变。

At the critical stage of the transformation of economic growth momentum,there have been major disputes over whether investment can be used as the main growth engine in recent years.Some people believe that investment-driven growth is the source of China’s economic problems.Distorted industrial structure,rapid asset price inflation and overcapacity are all caused by investment stimulus.Therefore,they emphasize the negative impact of investment,and advocate a large-scale investment reduction.We believe that the above views contain lots of reasonable elements.Excessive investment and strong stimulus indeed bring about economic structure imbalance,but we cannot reduce all kinds of investments or ignore positive externalities brought by investment demand.As it is still difficult for the supply-side reform to fundamentally promote China’s economy in a short time,and also difficult for the export factor on the demand side to become the main driving force of China’s economic growth,investment especially infrastructure investment remains one of the main driving force of China’s economic growth.In the past,various investments mainly focus on the regions between cities,such as high-speed railways,expressways and airports,while infrastructure investment within cities.In the context of urbanization,the infrastructure within cities should become the main field of investment.China is now in the critical stage of shifting from investment-driven development to innovation-driven development,infrastructure investment can not only bring about direct jobs,but also generate innovative jobs and structural changes in the economy.Studying the impact of infrastructure on entrepreneurial externalities can not only provide reference for entrepreneurial policies,but also provide guidance for economic structure upgrading.How to view the role of infrastructure investment in economic growth,how to further enhance the entrepreneurial effect of investment,and how to further amplify the creative power in economy is very important.From the perspective of micro decision-making,this paper studies how the urban community infrastructure affects people’s entrepreneurial behavior,and emphasizes its structural impact on employment market,thereby explaining how community infrastructure investment has become a key variable in economic structural transformation and helping understand how it becomes the fundamental driving force of the economy shifting from investment-driven to innovation-driven.The data used in the this paper are from China Household Income Project(CHIP),which are the outcome of collaborations between the international researchers who designed the questionnaires and the National Bureau of Statistics of China(NBS)who was responsible for the fieldwork.In this paper,the cross-sectional survey focus on the year of 2013.The nationally representative samples were obtained through a multistage procedure,which were obtained from a random large sample of 16,0000 regularly used by the NBS to produce official statistics for China.The samples include households and individuals,while it also contains information at district and village levels.We only include the samples of local urban households while the rural households and rural migrant samples and individuals who severely disabled are excluded,and the age limits to the range of 16 to 65.Then we have 10655 valid observations for the analysis.This paper finds that better community infrastructure not only increases employment,but also improves employment structure,increases the proportion of entrepreneurial activities,and enable households shift to entrepreneurship.In general,entrepreneurial externalities of urban community infrastructure are stable,and its return on entrepreneurship in central areas,capital-intensive industries,transportation and environmental fields are more obvious.Good infrastructure increase households’opportunities and willingness to start a business;coupled with a lower threshold for entrepreneurship,it significantly increases the probability of entrepreneurship.The infrastructure improves the efficiency of information,resource and element circulation,which leads to households’optimistic expectations,thereby increasing entrepreneurship and bringing about structural changes in the labor market.In addition to directly driving employment,the investment in urban community infrastructure also generates new entrepreneurial groups.It not only makes more unemployed workers to engage in entrepreneurship,but also attracts households to shift from short-term employment and self-employment to entrepreneurship,making entrepreneurship an important driving force for economic restructuring.We believe that infrastructure,especially urban community infrastructure,plays an important role in the economic transition from investment-driven development to entrepreneurship-driven development.It can not only play a mainstay role in stabilizing investment,employment,expectation and growth,but also serve as an important link between traditional and modern growth driving forces in economic development,and even play a key role in the economic transition to innovation-driven development.Generally speaking,the current research on entrepreneurship focuses on firms or countries,ignoring the role of individuals or households.Community infrastructure will affect residents’entrepreneurial behavior,but there is still no direct micro-evidence,and the research of entrepreneurial externalities of community infrastructure needs to be improved.First,there is not much research on the impact of entrepreneurship;the discussion on infrastructure focuses on urban-rural areas and between-cities,ignoring the issue of investment layout within cities,which is the main direction of the future investment against the background of economic downturn.This paper focuses on the entrepreneurial impact of the community infrastructure within the city.Second,current policies supporting entrepreneurial behaviors concentrated on firms or the production side,this paper proves that that policy supporting from the household side could also have significant effects on entrepreneurship.Third,current research on infrastructure always uses aggregated data from national or provincial levels,few studies use the data of communities and households.Fourth,relying on information about job-housing balance and infrastructure,we exclude endogenous problems to get the net entrepreneurial impact of infrastructure.Fifth,this paper distinguishes the entrepreneurial impacts of firm production,household services and public service infrastructure,and compares entrepreneurial returns of different locations,so as to provide policy guidelines to optimize the type,target,regional distribution and investment priority of community infrastructure.