{"title":"Flying high in the sky: The airports decentralization reform and regional economic development in China","authors":"Pinghan Liang , Wei Zou","doi":"10.1016/j.asieco.2023.101681","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>This paper uses the airports decentralization reform in China, 2003–2004, to explore the impacts of management structure of transportation infrastructure on the operational efficiency and the regional economy. The DID estimation shows that the operational efficiency of reformed airports significantly increase after the reform. We use a geo-coded micro-level panel dataset of Chinese manufacturing firms to estimate the economic impact of this reform. Our triple difference estimation explores three-dimension firm-level variations: location (i.e., near versus far from reformed airports), </span>industry (i.e., high-skill-intensive industries relative to low-skill intensive ones), and year (i.e., before and after the reform). We find out that the high-skill-intensive firms with better airport access experience 8.6% more reduction in the inventory level, 2.4% more increase in manufacturing productivity, and 2.5% more increase in the value-added after the reform. Consistent with the existing literature, we show that the reform increases external investment and expands market access. Placebo tests on unaffected airports rule out alternative explanations. Our results are robust against various alternative specifications.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":47583,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Asian Economics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":2.9000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Asian Economics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S104900782300101X","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
This paper uses the airports decentralization reform in China, 2003–2004, to explore the impacts of management structure of transportation infrastructure on the operational efficiency and the regional economy. The DID estimation shows that the operational efficiency of reformed airports significantly increase after the reform. We use a geo-coded micro-level panel dataset of Chinese manufacturing firms to estimate the economic impact of this reform. Our triple difference estimation explores three-dimension firm-level variations: location (i.e., near versus far from reformed airports), industry (i.e., high-skill-intensive industries relative to low-skill intensive ones), and year (i.e., before and after the reform). We find out that the high-skill-intensive firms with better airport access experience 8.6% more reduction in the inventory level, 2.4% more increase in manufacturing productivity, and 2.5% more increase in the value-added after the reform. Consistent with the existing literature, we show that the reform increases external investment and expands market access. Placebo tests on unaffected airports rule out alternative explanations. Our results are robust against various alternative specifications.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Asian Economics provides a forum for publication of increasingly growing research in Asian economic studies and a unique forum for continental Asian economic studies with focus on (i) special studies in adaptive innovation paradigms in Asian economic regimes, (ii) studies relative to unique dimensions of Asian economic development paradigm, as they are investigated by researchers, (iii) comparative studies of development paradigms in other developing continents, Latin America and Africa, (iv) the emerging new pattern of comparative advantages between Asian countries and the United States and North America.