The impact of transportation infrastructure on regional economic development-----based on the circumstance of Yangtze river delta area

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to analyze the impact of transportation infrastructure investment on regional economic development in Yangtze River Delta Area, including three provinces and one city. To study the interrelationship between transport infrastructure and economic growth, we collected time series data for four regions from 2000 to 2019. Although there are some existing studies have explored the same topic, this paper has its own contribution because: ○1 it used different data and indicators for transportation and economy, ○2 it used different empirical approaches which are Granger Causality model, including panel unit root test and cointegration test. The result indicates that the transportation infrastructure has a causal relationship with economic growth only in Shanghai and Jiangsu province, the correlations between the four regions are positive which means increasing in the investment of transportation infrastructure leads to an increase in economy. Since the Yangtze River Delta Area has an excellent freight transportation system, this paper also gives an analysis of the freight transportation.