新型基础设施建设对地区出口的影响——来自国家智慧城市试点的证据

The impact of new infrastructure construction on regional exports:evidence from China’s smart city pilots

新型基础设施建设的战略地位日益攀升,对我国出口高质量增长有着重要影响。在出口新旧动能转换的现实背景下,将国家智慧城市试点作为我国新型基础设施建设的一项准自然实验,基于2005—2016年中国282个地级市面板数据,采用双重差分法检验了智慧城市建设对城市出口的影响。研究发现,智慧城市建设能够显著提升城市出口规模,且主要通过信息成本效应、资源配置效应和技术创新效应来推动出口规模增长。智慧城市建设主要通过本地的贸易创造推动出口增长,而对周围城市的出口规模没有显著影响,即并未表现出显著的辐射效应或虹吸效应。进一步研究发现,智慧城市建设能有效带动城市出口的转型升级,具体表现为一般贸易出口占比、资本和技术密集型产品出口占比以及出口产品质量的提高。结论丰富了新型基础设施的经济效应研究,对于畅通国内国际双循环以及打造出口新动能具有重要意义。

New infrastructure construction has increasing strategic importance.It will exert the greatest influence on the high-quality growth of exports.The national smart city pilot is taken as a quasi-natural experiment of China’s new infrastructure construction in transition to new from old economic engines of exports.The paper considers the impact of smart city construction on urban exports using the difference-in-differences method based on panel data from 282 prefecture-level cities in China from 2005 to 2016.The study finds that smart city construction significantly enhances the scale of urban exports and drives the scale of export growth mainly through information-cost,resource-allocation,and technological-innovation effects.The export growth driven by smart city construction mainly originates from local trade creation and the smart city construction has no significant impact on the export scale of surrounding cities;that is,it does not show a significant radiation or siphon effect.Further study finds that smart city construction can effectively drive export transformation and upgrading.This is shown by the increased share of general trade and capital-intensive and technology-intensive exports,and the improvement of the quality of export products.The findings enrich the literature on the economic impacts of new infrastructure,which is important to smooth the domestic and international dual circulation and to create new export dynamics.