IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolet/v174y2019icp74-77.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Transportation infrastructure, competition and productivity: Theory and evidence from China

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Chong
  • Wang, Wei
  • Wu, Qunfeng

Abstract

This paper investigates the impacts of transportation infrastructure expansions on firm productivity and productivity gaps between the private and state sectors in China. Heterogeneous firms compete strategically a la Cournot in a multi-region model of internal trade. We show that lower transportation costs generate stronger selection and higher productivity by triggering fiercer competition. State-owned enterprises, however, are less affected, resulting in a higher productivity gap between private and state firms. Our theoretical results are consistent with empirical findings from China.

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Chong & Wang, Wei & Wu, Qunfeng, 2019. "Transportation infrastructure, competition and productivity: Theory and evidence from China," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 174(C), pages 74-77.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:174:y:2019:i:c:p:74-77
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2018.10.023
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176518304397
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2018.10.023?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andrew Atkeson & Ariel Burstein, 2008. "Pricing-to-Market, Trade Costs, and International Relative Prices," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(5), pages 1998-2031, December.
    2. Dave Donaldson, 2018. "Railroads of the Raj: Estimating the Impact of Transportation Infrastructure," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 108(4-5), pages 899-934, April.
    3. Brandt, Loren & Zhu, Xiaodong, 2010. "Accounting for China's Growth," IZA Discussion Papers 4764, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Zheng (Michael) Song, 2015. "Grasp the Large, Let Go of the Small: The Transformation of the State Sector in China," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 50(1 (Spring), pages 295-366.
    5. Chris Edmond & Virgiliu Midrigan & Daniel Yi Xu, 2015. "Competition, Markups, and the Gains from International Trade," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(10), pages 3183-3221, October.
    6. Dave Donaldson & Richard Hornbeck, 2016. "Railroads and American Economic Growth: A "Market Access" Approach," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(2), pages 799-858.
    7. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Zheng (Michael) Song, 2015. "Grasp the Large, Let Go of the Small: The Transformation of the State Sector in China," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 46(1 (Spring), pages 295-366.
    8. Jose Asturias & Manuel García-Santana & Roberto Ramos, 2019. "Competition and the Welfare Gains from Transportation Infrastructure: Evidence from the Golden Quadrilateral of India," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(6), pages 1881-1940.
    9. Giammario Impullitti & Omar Licandro, 2018. "Trade, Firm Selection and Innovation: The Competition Channel," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 189-229, February.
    10. Benjamin Faber, 2014. "Trade Integration, Market Size, and Industrialization: Evidence from China's National Trunk Highway System," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 81(3), pages 1046-1070.
    11. Giammario Impullitti & Omar Licandro, 2018. "Trade, Firm Selection and Innovation: The Competition Channel," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(608), pages 189-229, February.
    12. Chadwick Curtis, 2016. "Economic Reforms and the Evolution of China's Total Factor Productivity," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 21, pages 225-245, July.
    13. Nathaniel Baum-Snow & Loren Brandt & J. Vernon Henderson & Matthew A. Turner & Qinghua Zhang, 2016. "Highways, Market Access and Urban Growth in China," SERC Discussion Papers 0200, Centre for Economic Performance, LSE.
    14. Chang-Tai Hsieh & Zheng (Michael) Song, 2015. "Grasp the Large, Let Go of the Small: The Transformation of the State Sector in China," NBER Working Papers 21006, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Badura, Ondřej & Melecký, Aleš & Melecký, Martin, 2023. "Liberalizing passenger rail: The effect of competition on local unemployment," Economics of Transportation, Elsevier, vol. 36(C).
    2. Liu, Yajie & Cui, Lijuan & Xiong, Yanyan & Yao, Xianguo, 2023. "Does the development of the Internet improve the allocative efficiency of production factors? Evidence from surveys of Chinese manufacturing firms," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C), pages 161-174.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wu, Mingqin & Yu, Linhui & Zhang, Junsen, 2023. "Road expansion, allocative efficiency, and pro-competitive effect of transport infrastructure: Evidence from China," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C).
    2. Baccini, Leonardo & Impullitti, Giammario & Malesky, Edmund J., 2019. "Globalization and state capitalism: Assessing Vietnam's accession to the WTO," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 75-92.
    3. Chuantao Cui & Leona Shao-Zhi Li, 2019. "High-speed rail and inventory reduction: firm-level evidence from China," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(25), pages 2715-2730, May.
    4. Chen, Jean Jinghan & Cui, Chuantao & Hunt, Richard A. & Li, Leona Shao-Zhi, 2020. "External enablement of new venture creation: An exploratory, query-driven assessment of China's high-speed rail expansion," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 35(6).
    5. Zou, Wei & Chen, Liangheng, 2024. "The impact of high-speed railway on firms’ productivity," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 1374-1394.
    6. Dan Liu & Liugang Sheng & Miaojie Yu, 2023. "Highways and firms' exports: Evidence from China," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 413-443, May.
    7. Pham, Hoang, 2023. "Trade reform, oligopsony, and labor market distortion: Theory and evidence," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    8. Mark Roberts & Martin Melecky & Théophile Bougna & Yan (Sarah) Xu, 2020. "Transport corridors and their wider economic benefits: A quantitative review of the literature," Journal of Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(2), pages 207-248, March.
    9. Jose Asturias & Manuel García-Santana & Roberto Ramos, 2019. "Competition and the Welfare Gains from Transportation Infrastructure: Evidence from the Golden Quadrilateral of India," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 17(6), pages 1881-1940.
    10. Pablo D. Fajgelbaum & Edouard Schaal, 2020. "Optimal Transport Networks in Spatial Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 88(4), pages 1411-1452, July.
    11. Das, Abhiman & Ghani, Ejaz & Grover, Arti & Kerr, William & Nanda, Ramana, 2024. "JUE insight: Infrastructure and Finance: Evidence from India’s GQ highway network," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 142(C).
    12. Impullitti, Giammario & Licandro, Omar & Rendahl, Pontus, 2022. "Technology, market structure and the gains from trade," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    13. Cubizol, Damien, 2018. "Transition and capital misallocation: the Chinese case," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 88-115.
    14. Maria D. Tito & Ruoying Wang, 2017. "Exporting and Frictions in Input Markets : Evidence from Chinese Data," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2017-077, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    15. Gertler, Paul J. & Gonzalez-Navarro, Marco & Gračner, Tadeja & Rothenberg, Alexander D., 2024. "Road maintenance and local economic development: Evidence from Indonesia’s highways," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    16. Cubizol, Damien, 2020. "Rebalancing in China: A taxation approach," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    17. Camilo Acosta & Luis Baldomero-Quintana, 2024. "Quality of communications infrastructure, local structural transformation, and inequality," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 24(1), pages 117-144.
    18. Daniel Berkowitz, 2020. "Declining Market Competition in China," Working Paper 6897, Department of Economics, University of Pittsburgh.
    19. Baum-Snow, Nathaniel & Henderson, J. Vernon & Turner, Matthew A. & Zhang, Qinghua & Brandt, Loren, 2020. "Does investment in national highways help or hurt hinterland city growth?," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    20. Walheer, Barnabé & He, Ming, 2020. "Technical efficiency and technology gap of the manufacturing industry in China: Does firm ownership matter?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 127(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Transportation infrastructure; Cournot competition; Productivity; Markup; Market access;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F1 - International Economics - - Trade

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolet:v:174:y:2019:i:c:p:74-77. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolet .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.