TITLE:
The Transportation Infrastructure and Regional Economic Growth—Evidence from Dongguan Humen Bridge
AUTHORS:
Qiuming Lai
KEYWORDS:
Synthetic Control Method, Humen Bridge, Economic Growth
JOURNAL NAME:
Modern Economy,
Vol.11 No.12,
December
29,
2020
ABSTRACT: Transportation infrastructure is an important factor
driving regional economic growth, and scientifically evaluating the economic
growth effects of key transportation infrastructure is an important theoretical
issue of development economics. This paper
takes the opening of Dongguan Humen Bridge as a quasi-natural
experiment, and quantitatively identifies the regional growth effect it brings.
This paper uses panel data from 21 prefecture-level cities in Guangdong
Province from 1991 to 2007, and based on the synthetic control method, assigns
different weights to the cities in the control group to construct the “counterfactual” state of Dongguan where
the Humen Bridge is not opened, so as to compare the difference in economic
development between “real
Dongguan City” and “Synthetic Dongguan City”. The results show that
the opening of the Humen Bridge in 1997 made Dongguan’s GDP and GDP per capita
exceed the theoretical level that could be achieved when the Humen Bridge was
not opened. The opening of the Humen Bridge significantly changed the economic
growth trend of Dongguan. With the passage of time, the opening of the Humen
Bridge has continuously strengthened the promotion of Dongguan’s economic growth,
indicating that the transportation infrastructure has a long-term effect on the
promotion of regional economic growth. This work advances the research on the
relationship between transportation infrastructure and regional economic growth.