HAN Biao, ZHANG Zhaomin：Inter-regional Transportation Costs, Factors Flow and Regional Economic Growth in China

Abstract：The decrease of the transport cost will expand the interregional flow of human resource and capital, then the allocation efficiency of capital and human resource in national economy will get improved and the externality of knowledge, technology and innovation will get advanced, and finally the economic growth get promoted. This conclusion has been discussed in many literatures, but there are few studies which focus on the effect of transportation cost on economic growth. This paper uses the panel data of China's 29 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions from 1990 to 2012 to test the impacts of inter-region transport costs on China's economic growth. Based on the theory of “Two Region Model”, the empirical results show that the decrease of inter-regional transportation costs can promote the efficiency of factor allocation, thus improving the economic growth.

Key words： Inter-region Transportation Costs    Factor Mobility    Regional Economic Growth    Dynamic Panel

source:Finance & Trade Economics ,No.8,2015